a dark place, and how horribly, horribly sad we are when you all leave. So if you guys

wanna, like, move and find jobs, and, you know? I’ll run support services; I’ll,

like, you know, find you a place to live and try to help you find a job and stuff… no?

no takers? I wouldn’t come here either, but that’s just me.

So, my husband, if you ever get a chance to talk to him, he’ll talk to a small group.

He doesn’t do big crowds. To him, this is a big crowd, so… He has an amazing story,

and he’s fun to talk to, so if you can get him and get a few of you together, he’ll

talk to you; he just can’t do this. He goes mute. Which is weird, ‘cause he’s never

mute. But, so, I’ll try and keep it upbeat and happy, ‘cause if I cry it’s ugly.

I cry like Lucille Ball. It’s not graceful and pretty, so…

I was a fourth-generation Mormon, and I did it all wrong the first time I got married.

I didn’t marry a returned missionary, against my family’s wishes; attributed the long

road of, uh, not a good marriage to, largely to that; there were some other issues. But

that marriage finally ended after twenty years and four children, part because he just wasn’t

on board with the LDS path, and part because of some other stuff. So I left, I took my

children, and I started over. That’s where I met my present husband, Steve, who was a

returned missionary and we dated. My children adored him, and I thought, “okay, cool,

I’m gonna do it right this time.” So it was all in order, so we kind of had a whirlwind

romance, we get married, we build a house, together we have seven children. And about

a year into this, we were now settled, and I have it all lined up. I have the returned

missionary, I have the priesthood holder, um…

Back a little bit, when I was married previously, I lost a daughter at birth. K? So, she is

some somewhere. In my Mormon world, she’s now floating in the great abyss. K? So, I

now have my priesthood holder, so we can go to the temple. We’re now going to be sealed,

and I’m gonna have my forever family -- which, to a Mormon mom, that’s the ultimate thing.

‘Cause I get to have my kids, and I get to raise my daughter in heaven. The catch:

if I don’t, they’re going to give her to a worthy Mormon family to raise in heaven,

and I don’t get to. So there’s really not an option here. K? So my, my ducks are

all in a row; we’re gonna start temple classes.

About this time, my husband gets witnessed to at work, by the man that will eventually,

for all sakes and purposes, “ruins my life as I know it.” Ken Gilbert. They’re not

here, huh? An amazing holy boldness man, I adore him now; he’s one of my dearest friends,

but it, at the time, he, he, he’d ruin my life. He gets with my husband, my husband’s

going to get him back into the Mormon church. He is, in turn, going to teach my husband

about Jesus. So they start talking, they exchange literature. That’s where my first, my husband

first came in contact -- it’s his first “anti-Mormon stuff.” So he… so he sneaks

it into my house, literally hides it, and waits for me to leave, so that he can watch

it. And that’s kinda where his story begins. It kinda continues in this secretive thing,

his degree’s in anthropology and archaeology.

So, the DNA versus the… Steve’s. So my husband’s. So, that’s kinda where his,

the DNA versus the Book of Mormon was earth-shattering for him. And so he’s studying on his own,

and I -- I had questions, K, I wasn’t this perfect little Mormon girl, I had questions,

things that didn’t make sense, but I was completely convinced that I’d find the answers

within the Mormon church. That it was my lack of understanding, not that the church was

wrong. I really thought that it was just me.

So, he starts to search, and we’re preparing to do this big path, and the more he searches,

the bigger the hole gets. Things start to fall apart. So he’s still talkin’ to Ken,

and he starts to come to me with small things. Kind of feeling the waters to see how it would

be perceived. Met him with complete resistance and anger, fear. I was afraid and, at first

it was like “ha ha, yeah, that’s funny,” but then I started to see a seriousness about

him. And that’s kind where it kinda turns really, really ugly. And, it kind of escalates

into a situation where I find the anti-Mormon stuff. It was like finding porn in my house.

I threw it across my bedroom, I felt completely betrayed. Uh, I felt like he had deceived

me, and it was uh, it started the beginning of a year-long civil war within my house.

And I do mean a civil war. Mormon women typically aren’t submissive, K? That’s kind of a

four-letter word; it kinda means you’re a doormat, because we don’t understand godly

submission. It means that the man has complete and utter total power over you, and we’re

like, “no he doesn’t.” And so, it was a clash-- it was clash of the titans. It was

horrible. And I’d only been in a year, so I’m thinking “I can fix this. It would

be another divorce, but I have to get back on the path somehow. I can’t be called out

of the grave unless he knows my name. He’s not gonna know my name, unless he goes to

this temple to learn my name. I can’t have my family unless I have him sealed to me.”

K, so I had to choose now between him -- my marriage -- and my daughter, and my children.

As far as I was concerned, he was going to outer darkness; he’s now an apostate.

‘Cause it finally escalated to him, to where he, he denounced the Mormon church. So, he’d

walk in a room; I’d walk out. Uh, we have a family cabin that we’d go to, it was like

our little place; it’s where we were married. I wouldn’t go there with him anymore. He

went alone. It was not good. There was no friendship left. I was fearful; was so close,

so close to leaving, I had a plan, and one call to the Mormon church, just one call,

they would’ve swooped me and my children up, they would’ve helped me relocate, and

they-- they would’ve paid my way. Not only that, his family would’ve helped me, against

him. If I would’ve called them and said, “He’s, he’s an apostate; he’s leaving

the church,” they would’ve taken my side against him.

And so, Satan had the hugest opportunity to destroy my family, completely destroy it.

And everyone’s like, “well, what did it? What did it?” It was just a process of things.

So during this year-long war, he would, he would give me tidbits. Uh, things that he

knew would matter to me. Like, Joseph Smith had thirty-three wives. He knows how I feel

about polygamy. He knows how I feel about old man sleeping with young girls, as Susan

and I have talked about. It just isn’t okay. So he gave me this tidbits, he’d kind of

lure me to a safe place where I would think that he wouldn’t talk to me, and then he’d,

like, drop a bombshell on me. Then I’d freak out, and like go and slam doors, and … eventually,

I’m going to the Mormon church, K? Every single Sunday. He’s now following me to

the Mormon church, in a purple shirt, with a Christian Bible. For those of you who don’t

know the Mormon culture, it can’t get much worse, K, it just doesn’t. You wear a white

shirt, and a tie, and you don’t bring a Christian Bible. You bring your quad, or your

various Mormon… Mormon books. Back to the purple shirt and how that came about: right

at the end of where he’s ready to say “I’m not doing this anymore,” uh, he went into

priesthood with this purple shirt on, K, and he, he, he still was, hadn’t said no more

yet. They gave the lesson that day on “if you, you’re not a godly man unless you wear

this white shirt, because it represents your obedience to God, and your willingness to

submit to God.” So there he sits in a purple shirt, the only one not in a white shirt out

of probably twenty-four men. He meets me in the lobby; he’s furious. He has two fingers

in his tie that he’s now ripping off, in the foyer with everyone around; he’s livid.

And he said, “This is so stupid, like it matters what color of shirt I have on.”

K? I’m, like, dying. And I’m thinking, “Okay, you’re crazy. I’ve had it with

you.” I make to the vehicle, I’m gonna leave him. I’m gonna show him. So I’m

gonna get into the vehicle, I’m gonna lock the doors, I’m gonna drive home, make him

walk. (It’s not that far. It’s like two blocks.) Anyway, I’m makin’ a point here.

He knows me. As soon as he sees me hightail it outta there, he thinks “she’s gonna

leave me.” So we have this race to the vehicle. Mormons are everywhere, K? I don’t make

it. I get in, I shut the door, I hit the thing just as he opens the door. I’m screaming,

“Get out! Walk home. I don’t want you near me.” He’s like, “I’m not getting

out.” He gets in, shuts the door, he says “let’s go home.”

Every morning, we would have the same screaming match in my closet. I would say “please,

just stay here. Please don’t go to church with me. Please.” And he said, “you’re

my wife. I’m going where you go.” And I said “but you don’t even believe it!”

He said “neither do you. You just don’t know it yet.” So, away we’d go, with him

in his purple shirt and his big fat Bible that Ken gave him, the guy who ruined my life…

so, where we would sit in Gospel Doctrine class-- this is the day that was really good.

They wrote “The New Covenant” on the board, and underneath it in parentheses they put

“(the Book of Mormon).” He went nuts. He’s flipping through Scripture, he’s

pointing, he’s sliding it across to me and he’s pointing. Now everyone’s no longer

at who’s teaching; they’re turning around, looking at us. I’m wanting to die.

So from that day forward, I said “you can’t do that to me anymore.” I said, “that’s

not okay.” He said “okay, you’re right. That probably wasn’t okay.” And he said,

“so, when you go, what are you looking for?” And I said “Jesus.” He said, “Okay,”

he said, “well do they teach about Jesus?” I’m like, “it’s the ‘Church of Jesus

Christ’; are you a moron? Of course they teach me about Jesus.” He said “Do they?”

He said “Here,” he said “just, I want you to be just a little bit more observant.

If that’s what you’re looking for,” he said, “then from now on, I just want

you to just be aware of how much Jesus you’re getting.” I’m like okay, that’s fair.

So as I keep going, he lays off on the pointing and the… he doesn’t lay off on the weird-colored

shirts and the big fat Bible, but he lays off on the pointing and the antics and the

things in the foyer, and stuff of that nature.

And, so I went for another three months: there’s no Jesus. There’s no mention of him except

for in prayer. That’s it. We touched on everything else -- everything else imaginable

-- but there was no Jesus. And so, by this time I’m wearing down, I’m hungry, and

I’m empty, and I feel alone, and I’m scared, and I don’t know what I’m gonna do, and

my only answer is I have to end this mess, and try to start over again. Somewhere along

here he kind of changes his antics, and it’s because God had changed him. I look, in hindsight

I look back and it’s because he was becoming a new man. K? I didn’t understand; at the

time, I just thought “well, he’s getting it.” He started to approach me with way

more love. Instead of dive-bombing me, he was, he was telling me in love when he was

saying things like “this is, I love you so much, the last thing I want to do on this

earth is hurt you, and the last thing I want you to do is leave me.” And he said “I

just, I need to, there’s all this stuff that I know, and I need somebody to talk to.”

And I didn’t listen for a long, long time.

There was one day when there’d kind of been a truce. We’d agreed to disagree, and tried

to stop fighting. For the children. And he’d called me on his way home from Salt Lake,

and he said “I’m gonna go fishing at the cabin. Will you please come with me?” He

said, “I promise I’ll be good,” he said “I-- just come with me.” And I said “okay,

I’ll go with you.” Well, he stopped at a Christian bookstore, and he prayed in the

parking lot. He said “God, just give me something to reach her that won’t offend

her, that won’t drive her farther away from me, that’ll open her heart,” and so he

went in, and he, he picked a book by John Hagee, it was written by him and his wife.

There was like, it’s like a two-sided book; you flip it upside-down, she wrote half, he

wrote half. So we went up and our thing was, he fishes and I read out loud to him, whatever

we’re reading at the time.

So, we go down fishing, and he gets it out of his backpack (poor man, he must’ve been

scared to death), and he just said “I, I got a book for us to read together.” And

he said, “it has nothing to do with Mormonism.” He said “it’s just a Christian book.”

And he said, “will you just read it?” He goes, “if you hate it, we don’t have

to read it.” I said okay, so we started with her side, and I’m sitting on this rock,

and my man dressed in, I don’t know, ragged sandals and yucky shorts and a tank top, and

he’s fishing, and she’s describing what a godly man is. And I’m looking as I’m

reading, and it’s standing before me.

And it doesn’t have on a white shirt, and a pressed tie, and slacks, and shiny black

shoes. And it was profound to me, because that’s the first time in a year that I had

ever looked at him as being even remotely in God’s realm. K? From that point, he was

being led by Satan, he was hanging out with Satan’s friends, he was listening to Satan,

and he was as far away from God as, as I felt he could possibly be at that time.

I would say that that was, uh, the, the beginning of a new beginning for us. I was subdued that

day. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t angry. And so, from that, I started

to just look at him with new eyes. I started to see him like God saw him. And I started

to see him get up every single morning, into Scripture, ‘cause he wanted to. Not only