My name is Wendy Harmston Malstrom, and I am grateful for the opportunity that I have been given to bear you my testimony of the fullness of the Gospel. It has been a wonderful experience of discovery and learning.
I was born and raised in the Ogden Valley in Utah. My family comes from 5 generations of very staunch LDS believers. Some who came from England and Nauvoo and who traveled with the Saints West. In my immediate family, growing up was a very typical LDS lifestyle. We were raised with a staunch belief that the LDS faith was the correct faith to help us as individuals to return to our Father in Heaven. My father took the time to teach us the gospel as he knew and understood it, I was familiar with plural marriage and the practice of this principle in the early history of the LDS Church and I knew, that one day in the Celestial Kingdom, we would live this principle and understand the mysteries of the Fullness of the True Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Throughout my life I attended church, graduating from Seminary and attending Institute. At the age of 21 I married a young returned missionary in the Ogden Temple, there receiving my endowment and believing that my marriage was sealed for “time and all eternity” if I would live a good life, pay my tithing, attend my church meetings and the Temple regularly, raise a good family and devote my time and talents to my positions in the church.
Eventually my marriage ended in divorce, and I felt my life very unsatisfied and very confused. I did not understand the covenants which I took in the Temple or that my marriage was only a promise of a sealing and that a true Endowment teaches us how to come to Christ and have the Father’s name written in our foreheads. I went many years inactive and searching for understanding.
I finally turned to prayer and to my Patriarch, who was my father, for instruction which I received through his hands. He taught me more about the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ as Joseph Smith restored it and that there is truly a way back to God. He had been studying intently for the past few years, having wonderful experiences. During this process of learning and increasing my faith in God, I went through a process of repentance which led me to have wonderful experiences in feeling the Savior truly lift those burdens from off my shoulders as I was baptized for the remission of my sins and through what was a process for me, the “baptism of fire”, as the Lord accepted of my sins and my sacrifices to come unto him at this point in my life.
Upon gathering to the Sanpete valley, I met a wonderful family that I worked for. Through prayer and revelation, I found that it was time to find a companion. The Lord led me to my husband. I am his second wife. When I entered this marriage I was 30 years old with no children, and it has been a great challenge to mesh lives with an established family. Plural marriage is the only way by which we can truly sanctify and purify our characters. It requires great sacrifice and a love that has to become divine and Christ-like to make it a “Celestial Plural Marriage”. It is the way by which husbands can become Gods, Kings and Priests and learn to govern a kingdom through trials and tests and a great many blessings. It is a way by which a worthy woman can be attached to a worthy man that will lead her to God, where she can become a Goddess, Queen and Priestess unto her husband.
Plural Marriage is the vehicle which God has given us to build a family unit which eventually, if we are worthy, will become a kingdom. I testify to you in the name of Jesus Christ that there is nothing greater than to sacrifice for the benefit of others and for the building up of the Kingdom of God. I am grateful to my Father in Heaven, even Adam, Michael the Archangel, for His mercy upon me in giving me this opportunity of growing and becoming as my Mother Eve. I have been blessed with goodly parents both here on earth and in Heaven who follow the principles of the everlasting gospel. I have truly been blessed with a husband who seeks God first in all things and who has been willing to sacrifice his all, his time, talents, good name among men and is wearing out his life for the building up of the Kingdom of God. My husband has a great responsibility as an Apostle of the Lord, which I bear testimony of this truthfulness through the witness of Heaven, and is a great example for me for he is willing to give his all to his family in sustaining them before the Lord. I have also been truly blessed with sister-wives whose only goal is to meet our common God and Father. I am grateful to my Father in Heaven for the two children I have been blessed with, they are truly gifted spirits and bring me great joy.
It is my testimony that Adam is our Father and God, Jesus is the Christ and Joseph Smith a true and living prophet of the Lord, who holds the office of the Witness/Testator and it is through his teachings in this dispensation, the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times, that we are able to enjoy these great blessings. I bear you this testimony as a servant of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, Amen.