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.
Good evening, I guess, but welcome to another episode of The X-Mormon Files.
I'm your host, Bishop Perl, and I appreciate you spending some time with us.
I'm so thrilled today to introduce to you Annie O'Brien, and her story is so unique.
She's a convert to the church, and we'll get into that.
So welcome, Annie, and thanks for coming all the way from California.
Thanks for making the effort to be here.
As I mentioned, you're a convert, so you really spent your first many years as a, other than
Mormon.
Yes.
How were you raised, and where were you born, and so on?
Born in Southern California.
Oh, you were okay.
And raised in a Roman Catholic home.
Oh.
Went to 12 years of Catholic school.
Oh, that's an interesting experience, isn't it?
And I'm the youngest of five, three brothers and one sister.
And my older brother, Philip, was the one in the family that went the wrong direction
according to our parents then.
To coordinate a Roman Catholic son.
Yes, and he came LDS.
He converted to the LDS church when he was 23.
Have you met somebody, or how did he?
No, he was just fascinated with the culture.
I think he was, he was looking for that family kind of atmosphere, though we had a large
family, our family was rather disconnected.
And I think he was looking for more of a family kind of life for himself.
He did meet a young lady while he was in the church, and they got engaged.
And that's when I first even heard about Mormonism.
And so he would come to my house, and he would bring movies, you know, about the creation
of the world, and all these things, exactly, to show me that he had found the truth.
And how old were you at this point?
I was about 18.
Oh, okay.
And I just thought, whatever.
But I did watch his life, and I really believe that he experienced a born-again experience
within the LDS church, because the way he spoke about Jesus Christ is not the way that
most LDS people that I learned later would speak about Jesus Christ.
There's few that I've heard, like, you know, they'll make the statement of, well, the Lord
spoke to me, or things like this, and you don't normally hear LDS people saying that,
but he talked like that.
So anyway, he was about six weeks from his wedding, and the temple, and he was in a hang
ladder crash and was killed, and his death was, it just rocked my world in a huge way.
We were very close, and he was on the way to my house to pick me up to go to the movies,
and well, he never came.
And my father called, and when I picked up the phone, my dad said, and Philip is dead,
and then my dad hung up.
And I was just, well, you can just imagine, you know, a young person like that.
And so anyway, I totally did a tailspin during that time.
I just couldn't believe that a loving God would take away my brother, who was a wonderful
person, and leave behind all this carnage.
And I became very angry, I was very angry with God.
I wouldn't go to his funeral, I mean, I did go, but I don't to this day remember very
much of it at all.
Your heart wasn't there.
No, and well, first of all, he wasn't Roman Catholic, and my parents, of course, had a
Roman Catholic funeral, and the burial was done by the LDS church.
And they really reached out to me and loved me in a way that I had never experienced before.
And I sensed a peacefulness that I had never experienced before, but I didn't really know
what that was then.
But it was attractive.
And I think those seeds that were planted in my heart later, the enemy really used those
in my life when I went through another trauma in my life.
So you weren't converted at that point?
No, I just, you know, I noticed that there were things about the church that though I
would go with my brother, and I'd go to the sacrament meetings, and I'd go to the youth
barbecues in the fireside and all that stuff, and people were very nice to me, and the lady
that he was dating that he was going to marry was a very sweet lady, but her sister's family
were different.
The guys were kind of, they just kind of gave me the creeps, that kind of look, you know,
and I just thought, you know, I'm just not ready for religion.
And then after he passed away in that tragic accident, I had no desire for anything to
do with God.
I basically just, actually what I did was I got in my car and I drove up to the mountains
where the accident occurred.
I took a big giant rock and I threw it as far as and hard as I could, and I told God,
you know, I hate you for what you did.
I was really hurt and angry.
So of course, all of that led to my converting to Christianity, my becoming a born Christian,
because there were people praying for me, yes.
And I had a nurse that I worked with at this little hospital, and she told me, I'm really
sorry about what happened to your brother, Annie, and I just want you to know that we're
praying for you.
And I looked at her and said, you know, you're just wasting your breath because God doesn't
care.
I mean, you know, I was just really bitter.
But long story short, as far as that's concerned, I was invited by two other people to come
to a little church.
Christians again.
It was a Calvary Chapel in Southern California, it was Royal Reese's Church, and he had a
message that Sunday that I went that was so tailor made for my life that I was moved by
his spirit, by the Lord's spirit, to give my life to Christ.
And I did, and I was radically born again, I really was.
I couldn't stop talking about Jesus.
And I shared him with anybody that would give me five seconds to tell him about him.
And so years later, when I was 21, I got married.
Excuse me, did you have that same sense of Jesus and being, turning your life to Christ
as, I don't want to particularly point out Roman Catholicism, but in either that or early
on, you just didn't feel that same thing.
You never had understood what it meant to have an intimate relationship with Christ,
that you actually can be one with him, that there's a union with him that can take place
because of the Holy Spirit in your life.
And what he's done for us.
Yes, absolutely.
And that it was a personal sacrifice that he made, he would have done it just for me,
or just for you, had we been the only ones on the earth, that's how much he loved us.
I'd never heard that before, though I'd heard about Jesus my whole life.
And I do believe there are Christians that love Jesus that are in the Catholic Church,
just like I think there's some that are in the Mormon Church.
But for me, that was not what God had in mind.
And so I got married, and I have three children, and we moved to Salt Lake because one of our
children had a very serious and rare type of asthma, and we had to move out of the area
that we lived in in Southern California, so that's what brought us here.
And my husband was a Christian, or claimed to be a Christian, and we were married fifteen
years, and then my husband decided he didn't want to be married anymore.
So he came home one day and told us that, told me that, and he left with me with a hundred
dollars on the bank and three kids, and left the area.
And so we started.
It was a tough time.
Yes, it was a horrible time, a very horrible time.
And I was part of a church, and they were new in the area.
They had just moved into the area to start this work that they were doing.
And so I was part of that foundational part of that church.
In fact, I had prayed that God would bring a church that taught the Word of God verse
by verse, chapter by chapter, for three years with several other women.
We were praying that there would be one that would come here.
And finally one did.
So after my husband left, I went through about eighteen months of litigation, and it was
harrowing truly, because we had a business, his family was very wealthy, and there was
money involved, and blah, blah, blah, blah, anyway, about two or three weeks before the
divorce was final, my pastor had been visited by my husband, and my husband said he wanted
to come home.
So they encouraged me to let him come home, and to forgive, and to give him another chance.
And so I was very reluctant not to forgive, but to reconcile, because I didn't trust him.
And he had done a lot of really bad things.
And so I let him come home, and within about three months, we had friends come up from Southern
California.
It was my best friend, actually.
Christian women came up to visit us with her children, and one morning I got up and found
them together.
And so I had a nervous breakdown.
I just totally fell apart.
I couldn't believe that my Christian girlfriend would do that, let alone my husband, who
just got through telling the pastor that he was wanting to change his ways.
And so it was really a devastation in my life.
And it proved to be the pivoting point for me spiritually, because I was so consumed
with working, going to college, taking care of three children, and trying to stay mentally
afloat of the stress with the divorce, that being in the word that the way that I should
have been wasn't there.
I didn't have the time to really spend really studying the word.
So I gleaned everything off of Sunday service or Wednesday night.
And then I would have bits and pieces during the week, because I just did not have the
time.
So how did the LDS come back into you?
Well this is what happened.
My workers at the hospital that I worked at, I had several people that introduced me to
the way that God had a plan for a happy life.
And someone gave me a Book of Mormon, and I began to read.
And when I got to Jacob, I think I told you about that, Jacob chapter 2, it said here
in verse 35, Behold, you have done greater iniquities than the Lamanites are brethren,
and you've broken the hearts of your tender wives, and lost the confidence of your children
because of your bad examples before them.
And the sobbing of their hearts ascend up to God against you, and because of the strictness
of the word of God which cometh down against you, many hearts died pierced with deep wounds.
When I read that, I just broke, I just cried, because I thought, wow, there's a God that
really cares, and there's a church that really believes in a moral life, and it made me start
to think, wow, maybe the evangelical church I've been a part of isn't really the right
church.
Maybe it is the LDS church that's true, right?
Yes, exactly, and that's how it began.
And so, I didn't rush into anything, because I was very...
Did the missionaries come on?
The missionaries, I went through four sets of missionaries.
They came to my house, they talked with me, I had question after question after question,
and they were, if they couldn't answer them, they would send another set of missionaries.
And by the fourth ones, one of the girls I worked with's husband came with them, and
he was just a really articulate, and he still is a very wonderful person, and there's still
friends of mine after today, they may not be, but he really led me to believe that Heavenly
Father had this plan for me, and it was to have my family be together forever, and never
told me about the other doctrines that are in the church.
That came later.
And so, I began to prepare...
It's a little superficial, I think, with what they share with you.
I began to prepare to go to the temple, and during this time I met a doctor that I worked
in the same company with, and we started dating, and he was LDS, he was kind of a Jack Mormon,
though he really wasn't religious, and he had been divorced, and we were...
I knew him for five years, we were good friends, and so it just kind of felt like it was going
to be something wonderful, you know?
And so, as I'm preparing for the temple, it's my time to go in, and this was in November
that I went through the temple, and he asked me to marry him, and so...
Which temple was it, by the way?
Salt Lake Temple.
And of course, I was just beside myself in love, you know, at this point, that, wow,
this is a person who just treats me like a queen, and loves my family, and my children,
and, you know, all the things that go with any of these LDS, and he's really wanting
to live a good, godly life, you know, he doesn't want to get drunk, and he doesn't want to
smoke, and all that stuff, you know?
And to me, that was all important stuff, because all those things factored into my husband falling
away from God, and all of that, so we got married in October of that year, and went
on our honeymoon, and while we were on our honeymoon, I discovered that there was something
very wrong with this picture.
Oh, dear.
Yes, and I'm not going to name him, because he's still in the area, and anyway, I discovered
that he was stockpiling drugs, and as a nurse, I had a responsibility, not just for the moral
part of it, but also for an ethical, professional part of it, and legal, and so I had to make
this decision on what to do, and so I confronted him and asked him if he would please tell
me if this was true, that he was doing this, and I said, I'm only going to give you one
chance to tell me the truth, because by this point, the trust issue is already completely
destroyed, exactly, and he denied it, and behind my back, I had a bag that I had taken
out of a hidden safe that I found in our home, and I just took him out and said, you're
lying, and he literally fell to the floor against the wall and begged me to help him.
Oh, to help him?
Yes, and I just turned around and walked out of the house.
So, but you had been through the temple, maybe we could spend a second on that.
I came to the temple after, before that all happened with my husband, I went through the
Salt Lake Temple, and this is what probably brought the catalyst of everything with my
marriage and all that other stuff was, when I went through the process of the temple,
when I was in the first level, where not even the Washington, the 90s, because in my heart,
my focus was I am going to be consecrated to Jesus Christ, you know, and receiving the
endowments.
That was my perspective.
Yes, that was my, that's what I was told by others, you know, that this is all about
Jesus Christ, and so like, well, hey, I love Jesus Christ, so this isn't going to be a
problem for me, right?
Yeah.
Then we got into the creation room, and I just thought there's something really wrong
here, and as we continued to go through the levels of the temple ceremony, when by the
time we got to the level before you go through the veil, where they did the prayer, you know,
they learned all of the passwords and all of that stuff, I was so literally physically
ill in my stomach, I just couldn't believe that they were doing it.
I couldn't believe it.
I'm like, what is this?
This is not Christian.
You know, I didn't know what it was, but I just knew it wasn't Christian, you know.
And there's very little Jesus in all of that as well, right?
It was just pagan, that's all I could think of was this pagan, you know.
And so it was time for me to go to the veil and give my secret everything, and I got there
and I was literally shaking.
I just wanted out of there so bad, and I knew I couldn't just run out of there, you know.
My chance was gone from way down before, you know, exactly.
So I walked into the celestial room and I will never forget it ever, sitting down in
this plush chair, this plush yellow velvet chair.
And as I sat down at that time, the door that was considered the Holy of Holies was right
in front of where I was sitting.
They've moved it since then, which I think is really interesting.
But it was right in front of me up this little staircase and above the door were the words
the Holy of Holies.
And I sat in this chair and I looked at that door and I said, that is not the Holy of Holies.
And I was, I just can't believe it that they had that there.
And as soon as that came out of my mouth, I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit as clear
as I'm sitting next to you.
And he said, Ichabod.
And I thought, Ichabod, it's Ichabod.
But I knew in my heart that that was something from the Bible, that it was a Hebrew word.
I just knew it.
I don't know how I knew it.
But you heard the word Ichabod.
I heard him say Ichabod.
Well that got my attention.
And then it was time we could leave and I left and I raced to my car and I opened my
car door and there was my Bible at the time was sitting on the seat and it was different
than this little one.
And I opened it up to the back of it.
It was a missionary edition that had a really big concordance and stuff and I looked up
the word Ichabod.
I didn't even know how to spell it, E or I, but I saw this word and I went straight to
for Samuel and I read these words.
And she named the child Ichabod, seeing the glory is departed from Israel.
And I went, the glory is departed.
Well then when I got home, I got out my New American Standard Bible and I read, you know,
I read this little caption that said that it was the Sanofinius, which was one of Eli's
sons, which I had known was not a very good boy, you know, and that the Ark of the Covenant
had been taken captive and that was such a shock on top of losing her husband and her
father-in-law and her brother-in-law all at the same time that she gave birth to this
boy and then she dies in childbirth.
The whole thing's death.
And the message that I got was that God was wanting me to know that had he not spoken
to me, I would have been in captivity because that's what happened to the Ark.
And so I went straight to my husband, my Mormon husband, and said, I will never, ever go back
in that church.
I will never go back to that temple, ever, ever, ever.
It's Ichabod.
And he said, what is Ichabod, Annie?
And I described to him and he said, you know, you've got to go more than once, you know,
because it's like a college and you learn, you know, all this, exactly, and you know,
that kind of calmed me, but I had made the decision that no, no, no, no, no, no.
Well see, God already knew what was going to happen in the future with his drug addiction
and with all the things that he was hiding from me.
Plus you already had this relationship with Jesus.
Exactly.
Thank God that I did.
And thank God for his word, I mean, his word is what he spoke to me, his very word.
So after that happened with the drug revelation and then the confrontation, my husband left
and he annulled our marriage.
And I went to see a friend of my father's who was a monk, truly, up in Huntsville.
He was an old man up in Huntsville.
I had to talk to somebody who would understand that I had a decision to make and what was
I going to do.
And so I visited him up there.
He was still alive, which he was probably at that time in his sixties.
He's now in his eighties.
And he said to me, he said, Ann Elizabeth, he called me Ann Elizabeth, he said, you
have a very, very difficult decision to make because you have now been on the inside.
But that's not going to go over very well if you stay on the outside of Mormonism.
And he said, either you're going to follow the real Jesus or you're not.
And if you choose to follow Jesus, you will lose everything.
He told me that.
Can you commit to follow him even though that's a possibility?
And that was always the most important thing in your life.
It was the idol of my life.
My family.
And my family was my idol.
That's what God showed me through that, yes.
And so now I had a choice to make.
Either I was going to follow Jesus or I was going to hold on to my dream, my family.
And I wound up having to leave the state of Utah for safety reasons.
And this is why I have never spoken in public about what I experienced because my husband
was very well known and his associates are very high in the church.
And you went back to California.
And I went back to California.
I went to my brothers and in open arms.
I mean, when I left the state, I cried all the way to California.
Just a broken woman.
But I knew that though none would go with me, I had to follow Jesus.
My children at this time were teenagers and they chose to not go with me.
One wanted to go with me and he wound up coming.
The other two wanted to stay in Salt Lake and they stayed with their dad.
Are they LDS?
No.
Okay.
So how are you feeling now about your decision?
Well God has used that decision to reach other lives for Christ and that makes it worth it.
So I haven't worked with LDS, but I've worked with Mennonites.
And their religious system is very similar to the LDS church.
Absolutely.
Grace is not enough.
It's grace plus.
And so I just finished a seven year term working with Mennonites.
I worked in South America as well as in North America.
Lived in the community amongst them.
And I was given the privilege to teach the word of God verse by verse chapter by chapter
to women who had never been taught like that.
And they didn't know anything about grace.
No.
No.
No.
Not like you and I know.
No.
But there has been beautiful fruit.
I've now been done with their worth working in that community for a year.
And out of that seven years came three women that are no longer part of the Mennonite community.
One in particular is a born and raised generational Mennonite and she's doing really well.
She's bought her own business.
So just watching these women know that they are so special to God that they aren't just
special the way they're told as being in the LDS church, you know how we're special.
But to really know that we have a relationship with the God of the universe in an intimate
way and that everything about our life matters to him.
Even our sorrows.
And though he gives us the bread of affliction or the waters of sorrow, he's still as faithful
even in those times.
And he has proven himself to me over and over and over in my life.
And two of my boys are walking with Christ now and one of them here in Salt Lake is still
not interested in religion whatsoever.
I'm sure a lot of that comes from the trauma of what they went through, through divorce
and my religious exploits.
You know, I really felt spiritually schizophrenic for a while.
That's what I call it, you know, it's like.
But you probably anchored back to your born-again moment or that time when you turned your life
to Christ and felt so strongly that he was there in this free gift that he's given us.
I've spent 20 years studying Mormonism.
And have you learned a lot more about Mormonism now than you do as a Mormonist?
And what wakes that wonderful is that I have a passionate love for the Mormon people.
I love the people.
I put that there because when I left, I shook the dust off my feet, so to speak, as far
as religion goes.
But the first time I returned to the Salt Lake area during the last 20 years, I've only
been here three times in 20 years, was during conference.
And they had built the new conference center and I hadn't seen it yet.
And I got stuck downtown in traffic and I looked at those people going up the staircase,
you know, up the plank to the top of that building.
And I just wept like a baby in my car.
I just was like, ha!
I can't believe it, but our time's almost gone.
But I feel that same way that they're just blind.
They just don't have that understanding or a deeper understanding of who Jesus is and
this free gift of grace that he's given us.
It's such a beautiful gift.
Well, Annie, what a wonderful story and you've been through so much that I think God's hand
has been with you and now you understand that, and I guess feel that same thing that he's
watched over you.
Thank you so much for being willing to come and share.
Thank you for having me.
It's my pleasure.
And coming all the way from California just to do this, we'll see you next time on the
X-Mormon Files.
Thank you so much for being with us today and we'll see you next time on the X-Mormon
Files.
Bye.
Bye.
