I sang that song for more than 60 years, a song of praise to Joseph Smith, the prophet
of the Restoration and founder of the LDS church.
The church I served as a bishop for five years.
I knew the church was true.
I was a faithful Latter-day Saint.
My life has been built on certain truths, but wishing doesn't change the truth.
Jesus said you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.
When I finally learned the truth about the real history and doctrines of Mormonism, I
realized that I was following the Gospel of Joseph Smith and not the Gospel of Jesus
Christ.
I have come to learn that many others have made a similar journey out of the bondage
of religion and into an authentic relationship with Jesus.
And that's what this show is all about, courageous people who want to share their story, hoping
that you, the viewer, will discover the same new life in Jesus.
So if you're a Latter-day Saint who is struggling with questions or seeking a genuine encounter
with the Savior, we invite you to join us tonight.
We have a joyful message that we want to share with you.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the X-Mormon Files.
I'm your host, Bishop Earl, and I appreciate you spending some time with us and listening
to what we do.
We appreciate your support and your prayers.
Today is actually going to be the first of two parts.
So our pace may be a little bit different than you often are.
And some have mentioned, gee, I wish we'd have heard a little bit more.
And I just felt like this guest has got some interesting aspects to the story, and I think
you'll find that to be true.
But again, the pace will be a little bit maybe different than we've done in the past.
So hang on and we'll get through these two parts.
So we appreciate it.
And I'd like to now introduce Sherri Filos, all the way from Tennessee.
She's come here to be interviewed and to share her story, and so happy to have you.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, I appreciate you coming all this way and sharing your story.
Honored.
Yeah, thank you.
Now, were you born out that way, or are you from the West here?
No, I was born in Murray, Utah.
Right here in Murray?
Yeah, Murray Hospital.
And I guess we usually ask, are your parents really active members of the church at that
time?
They were at the time, yes.
Yes, raised on Guam, though.
Oh, you went out there?
Yeah.
And your dad was?
Father taught school on Guam.
Military?
Oh.
Just taught school?
Yeah.
Okay.
Mother was a stay-at-home mom.
Okay.
And how many children?
Or how many?
Six children.
I'm the second oldest of six.
Okay.
And all active, and parents were active.
They were.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For a while.
Okay.
How long were you out in Guam?
About six years, from about 1968 to 1975, around there, approximately.
Okay.
And primary, I guess?
Oh, yes.
I remember building our chapel.
That was back when...
In Guam?
Yes.
We helped build the chapel.
That was back when there was a building budget and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
And wards were responsible for providing a certain amount of labor.
Sure.
Oh, boy.
Things have changed a little bit that way, haven't they?
Oh, yes, they have.
Yeah.
Interesting.
So you come back here to Salt Lake, then again, when you came back from Guam?
Yep.
Family relocated to Salt Lake.
Father taught school for a while, and then got a job as a salesman.
It's hard to raise six kids on a school teacher's salary, I'm sure.
Now, your mom worked for the church, you were telling me.
Yes.
Mom wrote primary books, helped.
There was a committee.
She was on one of the committees to help write primary books.
Primary lesson manuals?
Yes.
Interesting.
Yeah.
She worked up the church office building.
Did you have some interesting stories from that?
No.
She was...
I was pretty...
I was young at the time when she did that, and she was not in the church too much longer
after she was in the committee, and it wasn't because...
What happened?
Anything to that?
Was it something that happened there?
No, no.
I was just coming to know some people who knew more about the history of the church.
And that affected her.
Interestingly enough, from the church office building, yes.
It affected her belief in what the church gave as its own story.
There is a difference.
She noticed that.
Oh, yes.
Did she ever talk to her husband about that, or was he aware of it?
My father, no, and I don't... at the time, they were having trouble in their marriage.
So it turned into a very sort of volatile divorce, and dad stayed in the church, mom left the
church.
Were you kids aware of it?
Children stayed with mom, yes, because we stopped going to church, and mom would talk
openly about certain things, and our lifestyle changed.
Everything changed.
When she left the church, she took advantage of the opportunities that left the church.
That was a tough time.
Oh.
That was a really tough time.
Were you going to young women's though, at all?
I had friends in the ward, and I stopped going altogether.
We would go, I would go occasionally by myself.
When you mentioned roadshows, and...
Oh, well, that was before.
That was before the divorce?
Well, that was before the divorce.
Yeah.
Before then it was...
You took some seminary?
Took some seminary.
Yeah.
And about halfway through my high school career, stopped all seminary, had a few word of wisdom
issues.
It was a situation where there were no more boundaries at home, and I associated leaving
the church with adult bad behavior.
Okay.
Let's put it that way.
So, you felt grown up, maybe?
I missed the structure, but not so much that I would go back.
What teenager is...
Most teenagers wouldn't.
Who wants to sit there for three hours or something?
Unless they have some kind of support, right?
So, yeah, it was inactive for about seven years.
Okay.
So, you leave high school, you're inactive?
I'm inactive.
Okay.
And I went to River State College for a year as an inactive.
Okay.
Let's see.
Now, that didn't actually turn out to be the best of experiences.
No.
Yeah.
No, I worked at a restaurant late into the night.
I didn't have my own car at the time, and I would come home smelling like smoke.
And it wasn't because I smoked cigarettes.
No.
It was because at the time, you could smoke inside restaurants, if you can imagine that.
Yeah, they used to do that, yeah.
Right.
So, my roommates assumed that I was out there smoking and drinking, which I wasn't.
I was working because I was paying for my school all by myself.
I went to school full-time and worked full-time to pay for school.
Now, did you explain this to them, I guess?
I didn't understand the extent to which they judged me until they reported me to the person
that was over the dorms, the dorm mom or whatever, the dorm RA.
Did they have LDS standards at River State?
They did at the time.
You couldn't have the opposite sex in the girls' dorms, and you know, I get all that.
Yeah.
When she came to me with their accusation, I burst into tears, and I said, no, no, that's
not what's going on.
I explained it to her, you know, I'm working, I'm paying my own way full, the whole way.
And I decided soon after that to quit that job and get one right close by at Ernst-Holmes
Center.
Yeah.
And so I could walk there.
Okay.
And continue working.
But yeah, that was tough.
Yeah, I'll bet.
So what happens after Weber State?
For a year, you were there, and then what happens?
Yeah.
Went to the Grand Canyon, North Rim, worked the next summer with a friend of mine, and
that was fun, that was great fun, and that's where I had my first encounter with Bornegan
Christians.
Remember?
The Grand Canyon.
Yes.
And they decided to try to convince me one day that the Book of Mormon wasn't true.
And that Joseph wasn't a prophet, right?
Right.
And I just wanted to cry.
It was tough.
That was tough.
Probably not the...
Did you defend him?
I didn't know what to say.
I'd never had that happen before.
I was caught totally off guard.
I knew them, they seemed like very nice people, and I was flattered that they wanted to sit
by me.
Yeah.
Especially after Weber State.
Somebody likes me.
Right.
Yeah.
But yeah, it was an interesting experience.
I think, you know, going forward advice I would give for Christians is, that's probably
not the best tactic.
Well, yeah, that's not... to throw that kind of negative stuff out there.
Well, at a young person, anyway.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What would be a better tactic?
A better tactic would be, hey, what do you know about the Bible?
Would you like to do some studying together?
Yeah.
I would have said sure.
Would you?
Sure I would have.
Yeah.
Because I had a scholarly mind.
I had an inquiring mind.
I wanted to know things.
And you know, that came out later on.
Now, did you have a testimony, would you say, of the church?
I don't know how deep your knowledge would have been at this point, but...
I had a testimony that God existed.
I believed I had a testimony the church was true, but I didn't have anything to compare
it to, and I had no other information, other than seeing my family fall apart and noticing
that when we were in the church, the family seemed to be okay.
When we left the church, it kind of fell apart.
So there was a little fear of, okay, I can't go too far.
This way I need to hang on to this church, because that's the only foundation you really
had other than your faith in God.
Right.
You had always had that.
Yes, I always had faith in God.
I knew God existed.
I could not deny God existed.
And occasionally, I went to church still, occasionally, not all the time.
And so from that point, at Grand Canyon Union, I was in touch with a friend from high school.
We went to the same ward together, who was working for Danny Ange as a nanny in Boston.
Mac East.
Yeah, Danny Ange, of course, played for the Celtics.
And she had gone from that family to another family, getting more money and better benefits.
And I spoke with her, and she said, hey, you should really come out here and do this.
It's a lot of fun.
Yeah.
And I thought, you know what, I do not want to spend my school year next year working full
time and going to school full time.
I'll work and save, and then go to school.
And so I decided, well, let's just get out of Utah.
And so you did the nanny thing in?
Did the nanny thing?
In Massachusetts.
I went to work for a person.
You don't need to say the name, but yeah.
Okay, yes, a person who was a well-known local celebrity, but I didn't realize it at the
time.
Oh, okay.
I did not realize it.
Christian Mormon.
Catholic.
Catholic, okay.
Catholic.
Nice family.
Good family.
I felt comfortable with the family.
They felt comfortable with me.
I loved the kids.
It helped heal me to some extent, being with the children.
Being a family setting and, you know, did you go to church back there?
Occasionally.
Yeah.
Still occasionally.
Now, were you, you were still in that seven-year period of kind of inactivity type thing and
was that true?
Yeah, yeah.
I was starting to have friends that were LDS because there was a group of nannies that
were LDS.
Were most of them from Utah?
Yes.
I think I just kind of by word of mouth, I guess, because I know other people have done
them anything back then.
It tended to be a trend at the time.
And they liked LDS people because of their morals and their standards, yeah.
Yes.
And we were trained how to take care of children, pretty much.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, most come from, and you would have with several siblings.
Being second-oldest of six children, yes.
And the first girl.
The first girl.
Second girl.
Okay, the first girl.
Okay.
So I enjoyed that very much after the first year and decided to come back to Utah and
go to school at the University of Utah.
I had been there for a semester and I found out about their exchange program to the University
of Massachusetts, UMass Boston.
That picked up your ear because you'd been back there, right?
Right.
Yeah.
And I thought, I would love to go back there.
And this is how I can go back there, continue my education and pay Utah tuition.
Well, that's how they do that because it would have been more expensive.
A little bit.
I'm probably not that much more, but it was selling point for me.
Not a foreign exchange.
You're called out-of-state rather than in-state.
Right.
There's no way I could afford to pay out-of-state tuition there.
Except for this exchange program.
So did you nanny back there again?
Well, my old employers found out that I was contemplating this.
And they said, hey, we will work around your schedule.
We'll find daycare when you are in school and as soon as you get home, you're with
our kids.
We'll give you a car.
You can go to school.
I think they even paid my tuition.
I mean, they just really made it so easy for me.
Provided a car and everything.
Oh, that's so sweet.
And worked with you and your schedule.
So you went to UMass then?
I went to UMass Boston for a semester.
And then I decided, you know what, I just want to work and hang with my friends for a
while.
I should tell you this story about the kitchen member.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
So there was one day I was making my famous fried burritos and I had to go run to a change
of diaper.
Suddenly I noticed the smoke alarms going off.
Kitchen is in flames.
I had left the burrito in the hot oil and burned some of the kitchen down.
So we're outside and I'm wondering why my employer is not more upset.
Why are you not being fired?
Right.
I was convinced.
They were going to fire me.
It was all over.
Come to find out, they were in the process of putting in a new kitchen.
It was going to go in in two weeks and now it was getting paid for.
That's why they weren't upset.
Right.
Got a new kitchen out of it.
Right.
Did the smell get through the house?
Oh, it didn't matter.
They knocked out that wall anyway, so it was fine.
Oh, that's interesting.
So did you stay back there then?
Yep.
I worked for them for another year and a half and then I got a job at Berkeley College
of Music in the financial, not financial aid, but they call it the bursar's office.
They don't have that quaint term out here in Utah.
It's more just where you pay your bill.
Like registrar's office?
No, no, that's, it's where you pay your bills.
They keep track of, yeah.
Oh, finance, finance or something.
Yeah.
I guess you would call it billing or something, but.
So where were you at with the church at this point?
Well, where was that from, with the church?
As a nanny and all that time.
I got more or less active depending on the month, I don't know.
I wasn't that active, but there came a point.
But you consider yourself a Mormon.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, it was.
Absolutely.
And anytime you did something that wasn't kosher, as they might say, then you probably
had guilt and that kind of stuff.
Oh, yeah.
I would say you probably went to church twice a month, which as a young person being out
on your own, that's not bad.
Yeah.
Yeah, pretty good.
That's not it.
Now you mentioned earlier that you'd gone to a Bible study.
Was that back in Massachusetts?
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
So when I was going to UMass Boston, I saw a note up on the board about a Bible study
for students and I called the number and I was hooked up with a pastor who had a student
that connected with me and so we set a date to get together and study the Bible.
And what prompted that?
Just did you feel like, okay, I need a little religion in my life or what?
I felt like I didn't know enough about the Bible.
I wanted to know more.
Which is probably true of a lot of Mormons, is that correct?
Yes, I think so.
But again, it didn't turn into so much of a Bible study as much as it turned into a time
for them to use the Bible to show me that the Book of Mormon wasn't true.
And I'm sitting there.
Oh, they were through.
Another tactic that doesn't work so well.
Right.
And I just felt like saying, no, I just want to study the Bible with you.
I don't want to talk about the Book of Mormon.
I just want to, let's talk about the Bible, right?
But I didn't meet with them again and so we didn't get very far.
So it was a little disappointing.
Yeah, it was.
It was disappointing.
I mean, you're holding on to this Mormonism and you feel like that's your foundation and
that's what you believe.
How did you feel about Jesus and the Bible, I guess, is, did you feel like it was trustworthy?
I wanted to learn more.
I wanted to learn more.
I'm going to have this move inside.
Oops, sorry.
No, I'm not sure if it's making a noise or not.
So you just, I mean, you were studying the Bible, were you learning things that kind of
surprised you?
I didn't know enough.
I was reading the Bible on my own and feeling inspired, but I didn't, I just didn't have
the motivation to seriously study it all the time.
Otherwise I might have at that point, but yeah.
So what happens after this, after your nanny time?
So after the, I met a young man and this is, this is a time where I was really asking the
Lord for strength to live what I believed was right.
Is this in Massachusetts?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I didn't want to get married.
I was terrified of getting married.
Was he LDS?
No, he wasn't LDS, but I was prompted beforehand that I was going to meet someone and that
I should be getting ready to get married, get ready to get married because.
Yes, yes, yes, because it didn't come from me.
It wasn't on your mind?
No.
In fact, I laughed and I thought, well, that's ridiculous.
I don't know anyone I'd even want to marry.
So a situation happened where I met somebody at work and went on a few dates and both of
us on our fourth date felt like we should get married, which was very odd, it was very
strange, Catholic.
Catholic.
Yeah, he was Catholic.
And I had been warned my whole entire life not to marry anyone outside of the church.
Not even day one.
And to even get married in a temple, obviously was a goal probably.
Right.
So did you think I'd convert him?
You know, I didn't worry about that so much.
I just prayed that the Lord would help me feel okay about just getting married because
I did not really want to get married.
Especially if you'd seen your family kind of go through their struggles and stuff with.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
So I had the comforting assurance that everything would be fine.
Feelings?
Yes.
Yes.
And we got married and I told him, I said, look, I'm going to go to church every Sunday,
whether you come with me or not is up to you, but I'm going to go.
And I would really appreciate it if you would take the missionary discussions, not because
I want you to be baptized, but because I want you to understand my beliefs and my belief
system.
So you'd recommitted then to go to the church, regardless of what he did.
Yes.
And I had recommitted right before I had that feeling like, you know, that I...
That the marriage is going to happen.
Yes.
That there was someone coming along that I needed to be ready to meet.
And did he...
He did eventually convert?
We got married in November.
He was baptized in February.
Oh, and a year later?
And a year later we went through the Salt Lake Temple.
And we're married.
What was that experience like?
You hadn't been through the temple before that, had you?
No.
Okay.
It was when there was live acting.
Okay.
And was it before 1990?
Yes.
And the disemboweling motions were still in the ceremony.
So was that a little disconcerting?
I was in that thinking, hmm, that's kind of odd.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, you know, I tried to focus on the positive.
Well, I think we all do.
Kind of ignore those things.
I'll understand it later as I go through more and more.
Right.
So that's kind of what you think, I think.
Right.
It was my only connection to Jesus.
It was my only connection to God that I knew, was through the Mormon Church.
Yeah.
Right.
And so, and again, it was my understanding, it was my security.
Yeah.
Was he your older brother, Jesus, at this point?
I knew him as God.
You really felt that?
I knew him, yes, I knew him as...
Did you know Mormon doctrine taught that he was your brother?
Yes.
My brother, in a spiritual sense, he certainly wasn't on the same level as me, at least I
didn't consider him on the same level.
A higher level.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He was my savior.
He was my redeemer.
I understood the atonement as much as I could at the time after all I could do.
I mean...
You knew that it was still dependent on you to get saved.
Yeah.
And I think at this point...
That's why we go through the temple.
At this point in my life, I was a lot more focused on grace, but I didn't know it because
I didn't know all the rest.
It took a while for me to understand deep Mormon doctrine.
I didn't know deep doctrine as a teenager.
And so, I think I took it on faith.
I took grace on faith, but I didn't know what grace was.
And it wasn't until later on, as a married woman, that I began to feel burdened down
by this list of things that I had to do and that I had to accomplish because it was all
on me.
And that's when I started feeling the burden of the church doctrine.
But at the time, when I became active again, I'd been inactive for seven years and I had
gone inactive about age 15 or 16.
So it had been a while.
Yeah.
So I was a seminary dropout.
Yeah.
Okay.
I didn't understand a lot.
Yeah.
A lot of Mormon doctrine over history.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, so you are married now for 16 years.
I was, yeah.
You have four children.
You adopt one.
Yeah.
Was that a...
How do I say that?
Was that fit into the family well, adopted, and that's maybe a whole story we don't need
to go into.
It's a beautiful story, actually.
It's another miraculous story.
I almost died having child number four.
And on the way home from the hospital of having child number four, there's a certain condition
where women have to, you know, they lose their blood clotting factor.
Oh, yeah.
And I almost...
You lost that.
Yeah.
I had about a gallon of blood with child number four.
So on the way home from the hospital, and they had to give me a partial hysterectomy
to save my life.
Oh, boy.
Yeah.
So on the way home, I'm thinking, I know there's supposed to be another child come
to our family.
It was a boy.
And I knew that.
I don't know how I knew that, but I knew that.
And I just said, I don't know how he's going to get here.
And I can't think about that right now.
It can't be me, but all kinds of distrust in God.
I just thought, God, you can do anything.
It's up to you.
It's on you if we really are supposed to have another boy.
You just felt like there was another one.
You're going to have to bring him to us somehow.
How old was he when you adopted him?
We found out about him when he was just born.
Oh, okay.
So it was a brand new baby, so to speak.
Brand new baby.
Brand new baby.
Okay.
We got a phone call from a relative.
And I knew when we got the phone call that was the baby.
And so you're very active, your husband's active in this whole time.
You go back to the temple off and on.
No, are you in Massachusetts now?
In Massachusetts, yeah.
And which temple do you go to, Washington, D.C.?
Is that the closest?
For a long time we went to Washington, D.C.
That's quite a trip, isn't it?
Yeah, it was.
And then we got the Boston Temple.
Oh, okay.
And it didn't go to the Boston Temple so much, because at that point things were kind of
falling apart at home.
Oh, okay, with hubby and stuff.
That wasn't necessarily church-related at all, that was just life.
Right.
Okay.
Yeah, it wasn't really church-related.
Believe it or not, we're almost through.
Are we halfway, I hope?
Maybe I don't know.
Yes, I think so.
I think we are.
We'll see where we're at.
Yeah.
Anyway, you just, let's end on a positive note.
Yeah.
You were talking about grace and works.
Did you understand?
You said a little bit about grace.
Did you understand that much?
No.
And I had been an early morning seminary teacher.
I had.
Oh, back in Massachusetts.
I had been primary president.
I had been young woman's president.
And I had learned, of course, a lot more doctrine.
Yeah.
I taught Sunday school to the teenage kids.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And.
Do you find those lessons were all topical?
We're just about out of time, so I'll kind of break off here.
Well, I think the unfortunate thing about those lessons is that they didn't tell you
everything.
They only gave you bits and pieces.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah.
Well, Sherry, you got a wonderful story and some more very interesting stuff yet to come.
I have notes, and I'm looking more than I usually do at notes, but sure, I appreciate
you joining us.
And we just have a heart for Mormons.
You know, we don't hate Mormons, do we?
No.
No.
We love Mormons.
I've got family as Mormons.
But Mormonism and the history and the doctrine, I hope you'll take a look at it.
See you next time.
Bye.
Bye.
