Kristi's Story

I decide to share the piece of my story that began my personal relationship with my Eternal Father.   I was 27 at the time and had two children and was married to an abusive man.  I worked graveyard and would often arrive at work with handprints on my throat or torn clothes…  I was trying to make my marriage work and had tried working with the police about the situation but they were no help. 

I got to the point that I felt I needed to end my marriage and so I filed for a divorce and I also filed for a restraining order.  My husband at the time would harass my friends, he disabled my car, and one night I woke up and he was standing at the foot of my bed, and it was only because I threatened to call the police- and at this time he had warrants out for his arrest- that he left.  But he did not go away, sometimes when I would be tucking my girls in at night I would look up, and there would be his face in the window.

 

I was tired of looking over my shoulder, he wore me down, and I agreed to move to Montana with him.  That is where all of his family lived and I thought he would behave himself with his family nearby.  So we moved up there and things only got worse. 

When the state of Montana stepped in and said that they were going to press charges, things got really bad.  He forced me to go talk to the prosecuting attorney and try to convince him to drop the charges.  The man just looked at me and said “I don’t believe you, I think you are just afraid of him”  I was afraid of him, and what life was going to be like when he found out that I failed to get the charges dropped.  I went to bed that night knowing that I was soon going to wake up with a gun to my head and the thought occurred to me that I did not want this man to raise my children.  

I was not allowed to have a phone and I tried a couple of times to get to a phone and call my parents but he found me and stopped me.  Then one day I told him that I needed to return the kids’ books to the library.  Because he was distracted, he did not go with me, and he did not follow me, so I called my mom and told her that I was going to run away with my girls and check myself into a woman’s shelter in the next town until I could earn enough money to get us home to Utah.  Instead, my mom wired me the money. 

I made arrangements to pick up a uhaul truck and arranged with a couple of neighbors who did not like my husband to help me load up a few things.  So my husband got up to go to work and I rushed to get the truck, load up some things, and then get on the road.  I was trying to hurry because he worked right next to the mountain pass that I needed to cross, and I thought I needed to be across the pass and over the mountain before his lunch time, when he might step outside and see me, and discover my plan.  So we loaded up what we could and headed for the pass, but they were doing construction and they said that it would be a 45 minute wait. 

I sat there in the truck and just sobbed, not knowing if we would be discovered or not.   And I had left in such a hurry that I did not grab any snacks or water, and my 2 year old was complaining that she was hungry.  As I sat there sobbing, and whispering a prayer that we would not be found, a little grandmotherly type lady in the van behind us came and knocked on my window and asked if we would like some of her sandwiches and soda. 

I could not believe it!  We had not attended church in many years, and we drank, and I figured God had no reason to know who I was, or what I was doing, or what my needs were.  I couldn’t believe it when she knocked on my window with the things that we needed!  It was as if he had sent this angel to tell me, that he knew who I was, and what I was going through.   This gave me hope.  

This wonderful angel lady came to my rescue one more time a few miles down the other side of the mountain.  At the time I was not sure what she was trying to do, she nearly got herself killed trying to pull me over, but finally she got me to pull over.  I was leaving sparks from a chain that was dragging, and she was able to pull out a very large and long pair of tweezers and jam them into the hole to hold the chain up.  I made it safely the rest of the way.  And my ex-husband’s family delayed him until I could get there safely.  The police were waiting for him when he did arrive. 

 

This experience was the beginning of my awareness the Heavenly Father loves all of His children, even when they are not being perfect, and that he was aware of me.  This was the beginning of the wonderful relationship that I have with my Heavenly Father now!  I love Him and I know that He will never abandon us!

Shellen's Story

My name is Shelleen and one of my experiences that has definitely built my faith and brought me closer to my Heavenly Father was that of my personal conversion.
I moved out of my home at fifteen, not for any traumatic reasons other than I thought I was grown. And with that said, I didn’t take myself to church.  Unfortunately the gospel left my life at that time for many years -until I was 28 years old.  And I just felt this constant need for something and I was not sure what that was.  I remember praying, specifically because it had been many years since I prayed, and I just said “Heavenly Father, you know my family is active in this religion, the spirituality seems to be the most lacking in my life, maybe I should explore this.  And if this is something that you would like me to do, you make it happen.  Because I have jobs that I love, a social life that I am happy with, and unless I move so I can change my life drastically, I don’t know how I could give this journey a hundred percent and find truth if it be there.”
The next day was Monday and at work we always have a stand-up meeting that lasts about five minutes. In the stand-up meeting the CEO handed us our checks and said “unfortunately, this is your last check.  The company has been dissolved.” and I just thought “ok.  This is not a coincidence. This is an opportunity and I am taking it.”  So the other job was a little easier to quit, and I called my sister in Florida because I knew her home was one of faith, and love, and spirituality, and also because it was across the country, and I could definitely leave everything that I knew and begin to change my life and grow, if this is what was called for.
  One of those things that were part of my life was smoking, unfortunately I had smoked since I was fifteen years old, and some other word of wisdom things.  Those things I definitely knew the basics, that if you are seeking truth or purity that you shouldn't do things that are contradictory to that.  So I was willing to stop everything the minute that I got there.  And I did!  I remember driving up there and thought “that was my last cigarette”.  Well, there definitely was some hardships after that, and challenges with headaches and moodiness,  and now I am just in this whole new life and world that had nothing of my identity.  I had been on my own for so long, and now I am in a small apartment with my sister, her husband, and four kids.  And I just wasn't feeling happy either.

A couple of weeks had gone by and I am going along with going to church, saying prays at the meals, and I thought “where is the joy and happiness that comes from this? Because I am not feeling it!  In fact, I feel sad and lost.”  and I would read a lot in different things, and I was reading this Zen book, it just had little parables in there, and teachings, and one stood out to be me because it really awakened me.   It is a short one, and it goes like this:  “A teacher walked to the master’s house, and the master invited the teacher to come in, and said, “What is it that you desire of me?” and the teacher said, “Master, I desire that you teach me.” The master invited the teacher to sit down and said, “May I pour you a cup of tea?” And the teacher said “please.” And the master began to pour, and as the tea in the cup was beginning to rise and fill the cup, the teacher said, “Master, stop.  My cup is full.” And the master said “Yes, and because of this, I can not teach you.” For me in that moment, I thought that all my life experiences, although they were some good and positive, and there were some negative maybe, and not so good, that all those things combined, were leading me to maybe a little bit of pride, and less humility.  And you definitely need humility when you are in search of something, or of learning, or of growth.  So, I remember kneeling and saying “Okay Heavenly Father, I know nothing.  Let me empty out mind and teach me.” And I remember that sincere quest: Just wanting to know everything of Jesus’ words.  “What is this gospel?” “Let me know of the truth.”
 And I don’t have a specific day; I just know that I fell in love with the gospel.  And I remember looking in the mirror, and seeing myself, and thought “Ok, I feel whole again.  I feel very familiar.”  Many things had changed; no longer a smoker, little things that you identify yourself with weren't there, but it was definitely me! I think it is because I started to see myself through the eyes of our Heavenly Father!  I am so grateful for this chapter in my life that has led to many other chapters in my life of building faith, and feeling closer to my Heavenly Father.

Elizabeth's Story

My name is Elizabeth and this is part of the story of my life.  So when I was at BYU I really, really wanted to do humanitarian projects and humanitarian nursing and I really loved going and serving, and I looked at people like Mother Theresa and I just thought that they were so wonderful and so awesome, and she is my hero and I wanted to be just like her.
So I started going abroad and doing semesters abroad and as one of them, I went to Romania for four months and I worked in a pediatric hospital and orphanage in caring for abandoned children, most of which had severe disabilities. And I loved it, I fell in love, and I was with a group of BYU girls, and we worked a lot with members of the branch, and we taught missionary discussions, and we were very involved, and we loved experiencing a new culture and doing humanitarian work, and I loved it!  and I really wanted to do humanitarian nursing as earning my degree in nursing, and go and do those things as a career.
And a little while after I got back from Romania probably about a year, a year after I got back, I just had a very, very strong desire that I wanted to go and serve the Lord.  I wanted to do what he wanted me to do, and I wanted to serve and so I really started thinking hard about going on a mission.  So I went one day to talk to my Bishop, the same Bishop that ended up setting Dave and I up a while later, and I went and talked to him and I told him “Bishop, I think that I want to go on a mission, I don’t know if that is exactly what I want to do, but I know that I want to serve the Lord and I think that this might be a good thing, but I’m not really sure.. What do you think?”  And he looked in a drawer and pulled out a stack of mission papers!  And he said, “well, here you go.  Fill them out.”  And I said “oh, that‘s not exactly what I was looking for, I was looking for counsel and direction, and I’m not exactly sure… all I know is that I want to serve the lord.”  And he said, “well you’ll never know unless you start.”

And so I started my mission papers.  And a month later I had a mission call!  I had a mission call back to Romania where I had already gone, and I knew the language and I taught the discussions, and I knew people and I knew the culture.  And when I got the mission call I had very mixed emotions since I had been there before, and  it was a place that I loved the people, but it is also a really hard place, and there is a lot of sorrow, and a lot of suffering there.  But I wanted more than anything to serve the Lord, so I kept going through with it.  I went through the temple, I deferred BYU, and I packed up and I moved home because there was about a month and a half between fall semester and the time that I was going to leave.  And when I left I felt so lost. And even in the temple I kept looking for confirmation to go.  But it never came.  I knew I was doing the right thing and I was still on the right path.
And as part of preparing to go on a mission I really studied preach my gospel a lot.  It taught me how to teach, how to serve better, and it taught me the gospel better, and it taught me to love missionary work.  And those were things I learned in preparing to go on a mission, but when it really came down to it, I really felt like it wasn't the right thing to go.
Through a series of miracles, BYU lost my deferment papers, the college of nursing had someone drop out so they had a spot for me again, because I was going to have to wait until there was a space until there was an opening, and I got back into BYU.  So I wondered, why was that the path that I was supposed to take – even though I was 100% sure that it was turning out right.  And I learned what I learned a little bit later, as I went through this process; going back to BYU, and serving in other ways.

The answer came in an April General Conference talk by President Uchtdorf called “Lift where you stand”.  And I needed to learn to ‘lift where I stood’.  I was really good at running off and going places and doing all these things in other places. But the Lord places each of us where he wants us to be for a reason.  And as I opened my eyes at what needed to be done right around me, right here, right now, through visiting teaching and serving neighbors and friends and family, I was astounded at all the things I was missing, because I was so concerned about other people on the other side of the world.  And those are wonderful children of God as well, but that is not my stewardship to serve, and that isn’t where I needed to be.

Heavenly father wanted me to learn to ‘lift where I stood’ and sometimes that’s a hard lesson to learn, because we often see other people’s lives, and pick bits and pieces from them that are good, and want to make them part of our own lives, and we want to fill our lives with so many good things, and it’s easy to get frustrated when the Lord has something different in mind.   And there’s this quote by C.S. Lewis that I really love, that I’ll share that illustrates this principle perfectly.  “Imagine yourself as a living house.  God comes in to rebuild that house.  At first perhaps you can understand what he is doing.  He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on. You knew that those things needed doing so you are not surprised. But presently, he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is; that he is building quite a different house than the one you thought of.  Throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, building up towers, making courtyards.  You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage, but He is building a palace.”

I love that quote, and I love how we can see those pieces in my own life. Especially in this experience that I had, while I picked one thing that was good- and it was a wonderful, wonderful thing, but it wasn't the best thing for me, and I learned so many things on that path, but most of all I learned that I wanted to serve the lord, and that I was willing to sacrifice who I wanted to be, for who he wanted me to be. And that through those experiences I've been able to serve and to magnify who he has wanted me to be, and I am all the happier for it!

More of Peggy's Story

Aloha, I am Peggy and I am a member of the Kalaheo ward, and so happy to be so.  I have been asked to share with you something pivotal in my life, something that was kind of a turning point in my life.  And like most of you I am sure we have all had many turning points in our lives, many things that occurred in our lives that caused us to make changes or go different directions.
The one that stands out for me the most, that really turned me into the base person that I am today, happened when I was in my early twenties.  I had fallen in love with a boy from Florida who had a southern accent, and he was a cowboy and a rodeo person, but he wasn’t the very best choice for me, but I couldn’t help it, I was in love, and I thought I was in love to the end, and I would do anything for this man, anything at all.  And I let go of pieces of myself to be with him,  I gave up things I believed in, I did things I that I wouldn’t normally do, and it was all in an effort to please him and stay with him, and I became not a person, but I became a support system to him, and I became very weak and vulnerable, and over the course (this is a very long story and if someday any of you are interested you are welcome to come talk to me and I will tell you all about it) but to make the story short, I left Utah, I was living with him in Utah, and ran away from my family in a sense, because I was afraid they were trying to break us apart, and were trying to take my child away from me because I was with him, and in the middle of the night literally packed up and moved away, moved out to where he had a relative in Missouri, and this relative had said “I have a house you can stay in, you can come out here”.
So I left.  I didn’t tell my parents, I just wasn’t there anymore, and they didn’t know how to find me.   I can’t imagine the horror of that happening to me, not knowing where my child went or where my grandchild went, but I did it, thinking that was the right thing to do, and being so desperate to be with this man.

Went to Missouri and when we went to look at this house that he had said that we could live in for free and he could work with this uncle, the house was in the middle of a pasture, literally, behind a gate with cows all around in the yard wandering around, the house had been deserted for a long time, it had been vandalized, and when we walked into it, windows were broken, cupboards had been yanked out, there was no carpet in it, and to top it all off there was a dead decomposing cow in the middle of the living room, and this was to be our new home.  And I think at that point I looked inward and said “what have you done? What are you doing here? And what have you done? This is now going to be your life?”  but I had stepped in it, literally, and I needed to stick with it I felt, and I needed to do everything I can to make my marriage work to this man since I had a child with him, so we dug in and we shoveled out dead cow and we boarded up windows and we cleaned everything out, and people in the ward at that time helped, gave some carpet,  there was nothing, there were no appliances, no heat no anything, so we acquired things through the church members, and we were doing the best we can, and getting along, but my husband was a drinker, a heavy drinker and he was a drug user, and he had told me that was going to stop but it didn’t, and his uncle was also an alcoholic and he abused his wife physically.  And when we were staying at their place to wait to move into our house I would hear him beating on his wife and his children screaming and crying, and I was trying to get my husband to get up and stop it and he wouldn’t intervene, and the next day I tried to tell the aunt, the wife who had been beaten, that she needed to do something, she couldn’t live like that.   I was appalled that she was bloody and black and blue and hurting and the kids were traumatized, and I said “just lock the bedroom door when he comes home drunk, and then at least maybe you can stop yourself from being hurt”.  But being young and naïve at that time, and not being really aware of what abusive husbands can be like, the next time that happened and she locked the door, he came after me with a gun because I was the reason why his wife was defying him now.  And so I had to lock myself behind a door with my child as my husband slept drunk in the bed next to me, listening to the uncle threaten to kill me and again it reiterated in my head “what have I done? What am I doing here?”  and I told my husband the next day “we were moving out,  I didn’t care if we had to live in the middle of the field in a tent I was not going to live there any longer.”
So we moved into this house and tried to start our life there, it was not a very good start and it didn’t turn out to be a very good ending, and I stayed there with him for six months, and put up with a lot of different things that I should never have had to put up with, and it finally, finally came to a point where he came to me and said he didn’t want to be married to me anymore, that he had had a friend of his move up from Florida and the two of them just wanted to play and party.  And I still begged and pleaded with him to make it work right up until the day that I had packed up the car and a U-Haul van and my brother had flown out to drive me back to Utah, right up to that last minute, I still said to him “if you ask me to stay I will unpack everything and stay” I was still desperate to be with this man but I said to him “if you let me go, that is it. I won’t ever come back to you.” and he said “no it is best that you go.  I don’t want to be married, I don’t want to be a dad” and that was devastating to me.

And I drove away, and I cried for about two hours until my brother said “that is it!  You will not cry another tear for that man! he is not worth it!” and on that trip home with my brother it took three days in a turquoise blue gremlin with everything I own packed in and on top of it.  We looked like Okies from Muskogee  coming across country with my mattress strapped to the top of the car, and at one point the back hatch popped open and clothes were flying out  and we didn’t even know because the car was so packed we didn’t hear it, we had passersby have to tell us.
Half way home I got down on my knees in a motel room and I prayed, and I hadn’t prayed in a long time, and all I asked was for the Lord to give me strength to see me through this time in my life, and I got up the next morning and I prayed again. And my brother was very reverent next to me, he wasn’t very religious but he stood by, and when I got done saying my prayers he gave me a hug and he told me, he looked me in the eye, and he said “you are a strong person, and you will be better than this” and the next day and a half we got home to my parents yard, and we pulled in, and I was not at my parent’s house for more than thirty minutes, when my husband called me and said  “he had made a big mistake, and that I should come back” and I had a burning feeling inside of me that gave me the strength  to say “no. you had your chance. I told you the way it was going to be. and that is the way it is going to be, and we are done now.”  You have to realize that up to this point we had broken up and gotten together three times, gotten divorced and gotten married twice, I was so desperate to stay with this man, so for me to tell him ‘no, I wasn’t coming back this time’ and ‘it was over’
I knew that was strength from the Lord! and I hung up the phone and I went into the bedroom and I kneeled down and I prayed again to thank my Heavenly Father for having given me the strength to decide that this is not what my life should be about, and not the life that my child should have.  And I vowed from that moment on, and I asked Heavenly Father every day after that, to help me to become the person I needed to be, that I could live independently and take care of myself and my son, and not ever become that hooked on somebody that I would become another person, that I would let all of my values, and all of my self-esteem, and all of my pride go out the window, just to be with somebody.   I was never going to do that again.
And even though I have since had other chapters and other trials in my life, I have always stuck to that, I have always been the person that was independent and could take care of myself, and stuck to my values even when I drew away from the church and wasn’t attending my meetings I still strongly believed everything the church has taught me, and always tried to incorporate that into my life, and now here I am back into the church again, and I feel stronger than ever!  And I feel that it was that turning point in my early twenties that helped me to become and stay the person that has helped me to be where I am today!