I was born in
Los Angeles, California, in 1941 into a four-generation Mormon
family. My mother died when I was six while we were living in
Barstow, California. My father then went to work for my mother's
relatives at Kiabab Lumber in Fredonia, Arizona. Though my father
was a strict Mormon, he nevertheless treated polygamist neighbors
kindly and told us that they were trying to do their best to keep
the commandments as they knew how. He taught me to tolerate our
fundamentalist neighbors. My father remarried after a year or
two and moved us to Southern California where I received a staunch
Mormon upbringing.
I served a mission for the L.D.S. Church in Uruguay and Paraguay from 1961 to 1963. I remember soon after returning from that mission, I wondered why the Church couldn't have the spiritual gifts that it had during the time of the Prophet Joseph Smith. I also felt that the General Authorities seemed rather pompous. After serving a tour in Vietnam, I was in Salt Lake City where I came across up a copy of Dialogue Magazine. In it I found the revelation received in 1886 by John Taylor where the Lord tells the Prophet that He would not, nor could not change an everlasting covenant. That greatly haunted and disturbed me for years. In 1989 I read Hugh Nibley's Approaching Zion and concluded that both the Church and the L.D.S. people were in serious trouble with the Lord. About 1990 as I was praying, the Lord told me that there was a sinister hand in the First Presidency. I had not asked the question, yet knew that what I had received was true. From about 1990 until 1993 I couldn't stand to sit in High Priest's quorum. I got much more out of Church by going out into my car and reading the scriptures on my own. In October of 1993 as I watched General Conference I became very angry with F. Enzio Busche's talk where he compared the General Authorities with the mighty men of Zion. I remember thinking in my mind, "It is enough, it is enough! I am sick of it. He who exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that abaseth himself shall be exalted." A few days later I called my cousin Jeannine Larson and asked if she had heard that abominable talk by that abominable General Authority. She answered, "Of course, Gary, the General Authorities are in deep apostasy." I answered that I knew. She then invited me to the models.
When I attended the models I immediately knew that what was being taught was true. I remember telling James Dee Harmston that I was there to stand up and be counted. I immediately started to have conflict with my wife and had to sneak off to attend meetings. At one point I decided to take a stand and asked for my endowment from the True and Living Church. My ex-wife screamed at me for 14 hours that night, 14 hours the next. She announced that since I was in apostasy that she was the head of the house. I announced that I would not live in a Matriarchy. A few days later I met my present wife, Ellen Barlow, whom the Lord told me to marry and not look back. I kept the commandment to marry her and as a result lost my wife and children from that family. But my little family which has come to me since then has greatly compensated me for my loss. I am so greatly blessed by the sweetness of my current wife and children that I can scarcely contain these blessings.
I want to relate something which happened to me October 9th 1995 at Spring Hill at Adam-Ondi-Ahman. I was traveling in Missouri with Apostles Randy Maudsley and Scott Koller during an ordinance mission to the North Central United States. This was a last stop on on our way back to Utah. We arrived at Adam-Ondi-Ahman at dusk. We went to Spring Hill where Adam built His altar. I walked over to a mound of dirt that is about sixty feet in length, about five feet high. I walked to the top of this hill just as the sun was going down in the West and the moon was coming up in the East. As I was looking at the rising moon through the trees, I suddenly saw a man, dressed in white just a little to the left of a forked tree. He was standing about three feet above my eye level, eight feet off the ground. There was a small dip in the ground which accounts for Him being eight feet off the ground. Within a few seconds another being appeared to His right. I suddenly knew that I was standing in the presence of the Father and the Son. I could not see their faces and didn't understand until later why I could not (D&C 84:20-24). A few seconds later many other beings began to appear around me in a circle, up in the trees. It was as if I was in the bottom of a large stadium surrounded by many thousands of these angels. One of the messages that they gave me was that I was an old friend, very closely related to them. Another message was that the Lord approved of our mission and that He approved of the True and Living Church. I cannot describe as a mortal the glory of this vision. I know of the love of the Father and the Son and it is overwhelming. I know, because I have felt it! We are the reason for their very existence (Moses 1:39). I also know that they live, though I didn't receive the Apostolic witness, seeing the marks in the hands and the feet. That witness is what makes an Apostle. Yet I know that the day will come that I will have that witness. I also know that it will occur very soon and in the flesh.
Gary Ellsworth