Originally I was a sixth generation Mormon from Utah. I was considered an active Mormon until I graduated from high school and left Utah for greener pastures. All total I spent 30 years in Mormonism. Almost 12 years ago the Lord saw fit to save me and I've been washed with His blessings ever since!
My first meeting with the Lord came at an early age. All Mormons are baptized at the age of 8, no matter if you've accepted him into your heart or not, you've now reached the age of accountability. As I prepared for the great event I had it in my head that I would once again be perfect. The LDS Church teaches that children under the age of accountability can’t sin. The baptism didn't do much for me that Saturday morning but the next day changed my short-lived life. At their 'confirmation' meeting to accept their children into the church, they handed me a King James Bible. They winked as they told me to go home and read it, and not understanding that they weren't serious I did just what they told me to do. I went home and began reading the book of Matthew because it was the first book in the Bible with red letters...very simplistic I know, but this is how He spoke to me.
I spent many long hours sitting in my bed at night reading what Jesus had to say to the people. I was more interested in what He directly said instead of what anyone else had to say about Him. I read in Matt. 16 where He asked the disciples whom people thought He was. In verse sixteen Peter called Him the Christ, the Son of the Living God. I wasn't sure what Christ meant but sensed that it was powerful so I clung to that during any times of trouble, knowing that He was ultimately in charge and somehow I’d get through it all. For years I imagined myself walking with Him in the villages while He taught the people about Himself and could almost feel the heat from his dusty sandals. It was very powerful to me in those dark days of childhood Mormonism. At the time we were taught to memorize the presidents of the United States at school, they would simultaneously teach us to memorize the presidents in the Mormon Church during our weekly night activities at the Church. It added fuel to the fire of confusion for me. I began trying to match up the back of the Bible with the Book of Mormon and chalked it up to my being female and stupid that I didn't understand why it never matched up with each other. The church leaders kept telling me it wasn't for me to figure out. My job they told me was to obey and do my duties; i.e. go to church and go to church some more.
As I dutifully attended primary and then MIA the more disenchanted I became with the Church. My main goal in life was to please Jesus. My family would teach me the stories of how my ancestors had risked their lives by getting on a boat from Wales and England, crossed the ocean and then the plains to come to Utah and somehow I had it in my head that they must have loved Jesus more than I did. Then in June of '78 the prophet had a revelation. He said that the blacks were now acceptable to the Lord and allowed into the church. This had always been a bone of contention with me because of my own coloring. I'm not black but I am much darker than the 'light and delightsome' people in Utah. My family is black Welsh, or as they always said; 'just dark enough to be dangerous'. I threw the newspaper down off my grandmother's porch and wondered why God hated me so much. What else was he going to change his mind about? You see I had already been living with another change of mind of his. My great-grandfather’s children were still alive when I was growing up and attending all of our family reunions. My great grandfather was a polygamist. I literally have hundreds and hundreds of relatives. It was really no big thing for any multi-generational Mormon from Utah. All of us had the same testimony of the polygamous backgrounds. In my eyes though God had changed his mind twice now and it scared me that I wouldn't ever be good enough for him. I was 14 years old and didn't know who God was but knew enough that he scared me.
When I was about 16 I had a terrible experience in the Ogden Temple. I was being baptized for dead people and taking the Mormon oaths when I became violently ill. I begged the adult there to help me but it was as if he was in a trance and my pleas fell upon deaf ears. On the way home I questioned our bishop about the experience and he told me it was God that appeared to me. I countered his view by telling him that God never did that to me before, he didn't say another word to me all the way home. The next day (Sunday) as I was walking down the church hallway to go to my Sunday school class, I heard my classmates laughing. The closer I got, the more discernible their conversation became to me. They were talking about my experience the day before and saying that I was worshipping a different god than they were; they said the walls were going to cave right in on all of them because I was in the building. This conversation stopped me dead in my tracks. I caught my breath and walked out, never to return to another Sunday school meeting. I was required to finish Seminary in order to graduate from high school but that was the extent of my temple work from there on out. By this time my parents were divorced. My father had never been active for more than a year at a time but my mother was greatly disappointed in me for this one. His reaction to my short-leashed exodus when I was 30 was a non-committal attitude. He always told me in any situation that if I had any doubts then don’t do it. I figured that was a good enough excuse for me in this situation so I just didn’t go.
My mother had tried to keep me active by filling in as the primary teacher throughout the years or serving as the girls’ basketball and volleyball coach for our ward and now I didn’t even attend so she obviously lost her position. Looking back on it now it must have hurt her greatly I’m sure. Her side of the family was all temple Mormons so the pressure must have been intense for her as it still is to this day.
By the time I had graduated from high school I was in complete rebellion. I began college but didn’t pay attention to any authority figure at all. While going to school I also worked full time as a waitress downtown at a Chinese restaurant. It was there that I met and married my first husband. I had known Eddie for two months and the only reason I married him was because he wasn’t white. I thought if that didn’t get my parent’s attention then nothing would. Well it got their attention all right but not the attention I was expecting! From the beginning he beat me up regularly, wouldn’t allow me to speak English in my own home (originally he was from Sai Pan), and chastised each move I made in our home. I thought that if we moved to be near his family then it would fix things but I was wrong in the end. I didn’t take my father’s advice on this decision and moved to Oklahoma City in May of 1983. By September of the following year I had three restraining orders filed against Eddie and moved back home with my tail between my legs. The beatings had become more than I could cover up, they were actually relentless within a year and it scared me. While I was there though, God was at work in my life without my even knowing it.
The first person I met there was a born-again Christian whose father served as a co-pastor of the church they attended. They would tell me stories of how Jesus loved all people, how He wasn’t there to condemn me but to love me and continued to show me the patience and mercy God would have shown to me. I immediately fell in love with their disposition and wondered if all Christians acted like they did. It was also the first time I had ever heard of the word cult.
I finally made it out of Oklahoma, moved back home and began college for the third time when I met Kirk. I had a nagging urge to be married but at the same time wanted so badly to go to school for studies. I began studying World War History and the Jews. Little did I know that there was one Jew in particular that God wanted me to know, Jesus! From the time I was a small girl, I had a fascination with a show that would come on the television each Sunday evening. I would sit and watch World At War every week while my friends would beg me to come outside to ride bikes or play with them. I couldn’t pull myself away. It baffled me why someone was out there killing all of God’s people and be so filled with hatred. I watched piles of bodies being loaded into gardening carts to be taken away to the incinerators as I cried for the Jews. By the time I got out of high school the fascination had turned into an indignant disposition towards Hitler, or anyone else that condemned God’s people. Ironically enough the hatred that I held in my own heart towards the Christians didn’t seem as bad. Somehow I had rationalized this for myself; the teachings of the Church couldn’t be as bad as Hitler after all.
Kirk was in the Air Force at the time, stationed at Hill Air Force Base in Ogden. We began dating and I found out he was a recent convert to the church, I was 20 years old. His girlfriend had dumped him right after he joined the church and he wanted out of Los Angeles where he was from so he joined the Air Force and was stationed there in Ogden for three years. I had vowed to myself to never marry even though I felt that I was sinning if I didn’t and eventually I found that I couldn’t resist Kirk any longer. We were married in May of '85 and received orders to move to Ramstein, Germany, just one month after our wedding. Once again God intervened in my life and the first person I met after arriving in Germany was a born-again Christian whose father was a pastor. We became good friends immediately, and I couldn’t explain it but there was just something about her that I couldn’t resist. Not long after we got there I landed a job as a tour guide for the USO and taught the newly stationed Americans about Martin Luther and the reformation. I had never heard of Martin Luther and I wasn't allowed to look at crosses as a Mormon so I memorized the script they gave me and taught the military members and dependants about the cross of Jesus and Martin Luther with his 95 point thesis. God is really funny! My friend Claudia would answer the questions I had regarding the Reformation and God but it just didn’t make sense to me. We lived in Germany from July of 1985 to June of 1988.
Then in October of '88 we were stationed back to the states (Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, NV), but this time we were expecting our first daughter, Mallory. She was the catalyst for our exodus from the church. She died while she was still inside of me form a lack of oxygen; and was stillborn on October 27th. Without a spoken word she served her purpose for the Lord to show us His mercy on us. At her funeral the bishop told us we were going to hell because we hadn't been married in the temple. I buried my daughter that day along with the church. I couldn't believe that Jesus would send me to hell for not being married in a certain building. It couldn’t have been made any clearer to me than this. My heart had never hurt like that before. Later that day I questioned my mother about what he said and she told me she didn’t hear that in his message. I truly thought I was going crazy. Ironically enough Kirk and I didn’t even discuss what had been said until years afterwards and only after we were saved.
After Mallory’s death I chose to close myself in at my apartment. Kirk would leave each Monday morning for some far off place to work on the Stealth Fighter jets and return on Thursday nights. After several months of crying and shutting society out of my life, I went out and got a job. I was lonely, and exhausted; I needed to be around people again and craved someone to talk to each day. Once again God had His hand in all of that as well and true to form the first person I met was a born-again Christian. Only this time there was more than one!
I began questioning my new found friends Shirley and JoAnn about God. I wanted the truth this time and I didn’t want any made up stories about their own ideas. They showed me Jesus’ patience and love. They became classic examples of a true Christian. I then called Claudia’s dad to ask him about Mallory. I wanted to know if he thought I’d see her again so he flew me out to Colorado for a visit. It was there that he shared the entire gospel with me and the truth about Mallory. My heart hurt so much over the loss of her. I couldn’t imagine not feeling or touching her again and my arms physically ached from not holding her. I’ve never experienced that kind of physical pain before or since. I left Colorado with a better understanding of Jesus but still didn’t invite Him into my life as Lord.
In August of 1990 I sat in stunned silence as I listened to the voice on the other end of the phone and the first thing that came to my mind was the baby I was carrying. Kirk and I were expecting our second daughter, Jacquelyn. The voice was Kirk’s commander telling me that Kirk had been sent off to the Gulf War. He couldn’t tell me where he was at that moment or when I’d hear from him but just wanted to let me know ‘not to expect him for dinner’. I wouldn’t see Kirk again for seven months, and by that time Jacquelyn was almost two months old. Thankfully God brought Kirk home to me and he decided to get out of the service full time after serving nine years in active duty. At the end of that enlistment we moved out of Vegas and north to the Reno area in the summer of 1991 where Kirk joined the National Guard. His parents became our life savers for the next several months as we moved in with them and our new baby but early in 1992 we moved yet again when Kirk was offered a job in the Seattle area.
Not long after we got unpacked and moved into our new home we found out that we were expecting another daughter. I didn’t believe everything about Mormonism at this point but couldn’t pull myself away from the deep cultural aspects of it. I craved needing to bring babies into the world but didn’t know why. So baby number three within four years was on her way. About half way through that pregnancy my life would make another dramatic change. I was out on a walk with Jacquelyn in my little neighborhood when I saw two women standing outside chatting. I walked right up to them and noticed that one of them was wearing a cross so I approached to ask her what the cross meant to her. I introduced myself by saying, ‘Hi my name is Michelle and I'm a Mormon’. She replied by saying ‘I will pray for you’.
Nancy was the first person I met here in Seattle. This time her father wasn’t a pastor but she sure did know her Bible! I invited her over for coffee one day (yes coffee) to drill her on Jesus. The first thing she asked me was if I believed in the Trinity. I had never heard of the word Trinity before so I asked her to explain. She sat with me for hours that day and invited me to church for the following Sunday. Before she arrived to pick me up that morning I called to bag on her invitation but she refused. She actually began praying over the phone that Satan get behind us and leave us alone! I was aghast that anyone would pray over the phone! She arrived five minutes later in pants which I thought was abhorrent at the time and drove me to church. The parking lot was filled with people laughing and children running around. I had never seen anything so irreverent in my life! It was nothing that I had experienced as a Mormon, my life as a Mormon was beset with rules and regulations on how to worship God. But as we got out of the mini-van and walked towards the building, I looked up and there stood a little white cross at the top of that building. As I entered the front doors God spoke to me gently, saying ‘Michelle you’re finally home’. I fell to my knees an hour later crying as I had never cried before. Jesus suddenly became real in my life that day.
I quickly lost my entire family in Utah. I've been shunned since then and have found no greater joy since! The loss of hundreds of relatives is no comparison to what I gained in having Him in my life and the lives of my family now. Kirk was saved a couple of years after I was and now our daughters, Jacquelyn and Alexandra walk with the Lord as well.
As a child I asked the Lord for three things. A husband who I could travel the world with, three daughters and a church with a little white cross on top. He gave me all those things and more! And then about two years after I got saved I met Ed Decker. Ironically enough I had spit in his face back in '83 in Oklahoma City when he was speaking on Mormonism. I told him he was lying, not wanting him to expose the truth to the world about Mormonism. And in keeping w/ God's sense of humor, I began working alongside him! Then in May of 2004, Ed himself renewed our wedding vows for us in his backyard at the edge of the river. Our girls served as our witnesses before God and Ed’s wife served us our cake! We invited an ex-Mormon I befriended and a good friend who mentored me when I got out of the church.
My life now is spent with exit-counseling for the Mormons, going on missions to the various places where they congregate in order to witness and warn young people to stay away from those Mormon missionaries. My life is full and complete with all that He has for me to do! Kirk and I also teamed up with another couple to begin a new ministry geared just towards life after Mormonism...it's called Life After Ministries. My journey after I left Mormonism was as dramatic of an experience for me as the journey towards Jesus. I know without a doubt that I am called to do this work with the Lord. Not that I am the instigator or supplier of the ‘work’. Only He is in charge of all that I do each day. I cannot imagine life any other way now and the longer I am a Christian the more amazing it is to me that I lived my life as a Mormon for 30 years. I close with what Jude 24-5 says; “Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.”
