Marvelous Work and a Wonder® Testimonials

Hi. My name is Bret Powelson. I was born in Glendale, California in 1968. I was raised by very wealthy and very strict LDS/Mormon parents in Salt Lake City, Utah.

I loved my childhood. I was a happy child, but as I became a teenager, I did not respond well to the expectations placed upon me. As I look back, I am saddened because I got into a lot trouble, which caused my parents a lot of distress. My reaction to them in my early to late teens set a precedent that established a pattern of behavior for me during the rest of my life. I am much better at it now, but throughout my life I have found it challenging to conform when I have felt dominion being exercised over me unrighteously.

In my late teens, I read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover. The Book of Mormon had a profound effect upon me, so I decided to serve a mission for the LDS/Mormon Church. The Book of Mormon changed the course of my life. When I read that book for the first time, I was amazed by its stories and power. To this day, I still love that book. It is one of my favorite books of all time.

When I returned home from serving a mission for the Church, I quickly married an LDS/Mormon young lady. We had four children over the course of a fifteen-year marriage. I loved my wife and children with all my heart, but I did not know how to fulfill the marital, financial and religious expectations placed upon me, so I took a lot of drugs on the sly to cope with the pain. I did not mean to hurt anybody; I just didn’t know how to live in what seemed to me to be an impossible situation. Eventually, I had a drug overdose that put me in a coma for twelve days.

After I awakened from a coma, I was devastated and humiliated. From that time forward, it seemed everything I did was an effort to make amends, not only to my wife and children, but also my parents and anyone else I perceived had been harmed by my addiction to drugs. With humility and contrition, I met with many people face to face and apologized and asked how I could make things right. I desperately tried to undo many hurtful and harmful things I had done and tried to finish many things I had left unfinished. Instead of just making amends, I tried to pattern my life as if I was living a life of amends. I wanted to show everyone around me that I respected them and I did not mean to hurt them.

During this time of abstention and penance, I was ordained to the office of high priest in the LDS/Mormon Church and graduated with a degree from Brigham Young University in Health and Wellness. I think the boldness of those two milestones, especially after I had experienced a drug overdose, antagonized a lot of people around me, because I was not as well-received after those two things happened as before. Part of me felt as if my recovery from addiction, earning a college degree and living a life of amends was not really worth the effort, because of the way I was received by those who were closest to me. I was treated like I was confronting and challenging them, but in my view, I was just trying to conform with them and be more like them.

My intention in going back to college at age 40 was to become more qualified to provide better for my family, which is something I was never successful doing. I deeply wanted to fix that aspect of my life, because I had not done it very well.

And being ordained to the office of high priest came unexpectedly. I did not seek for it. It is very uncommon for an unmarried man of my age (age 40) to be ordained to the office of high priest, especially after being disfellowshipped from the Church for nearly two years for “Behavior Unbecoming a Member of the Church,” but it happened to me and certain people around me did not approve. At one point, I even had another high priest who was not familiar with me approach me and ask, “Why were you made a High Priest?”

I did not anticipate that being ordained a high priest at a younger-than-average age and earning a bachelor’s degree at a higher-than-average age would provoke such scorn from the people in my social circle, but it did.

In obtaining a degree in Health and Wellness, I just wanted to participate in helping my family and others enjoy living more healthfully, which was part of my living amends, but people’s contempt toward me was too much. The damage caused by my past substance abuse was too extreme. My drug addiction spanned such a period of time and went through such destructive phases, it is understandable why many of the people around me at that time could not forgive me. It would have been easy to judge that my efforts to make amends were not sincere and not long-lasting. Mea culpa. That being said, throughout my life experiences, I have observed that certain people feel varying degrees of freudenschade when they witness betterment or self-improvement in others.

After about ten years of living a devout, disciplined and ascetic lifestyle, I became convinced that there was nothing I could do to persuade my parents, my ex-wife, her parents, some of my siblings, my children, etc. to like me or respect me, so I stopped trying to please them and decided to live according to the dictates of my own conscience. Through this journey of self-analysis and living amends, my heart broke. I felt cast down, broken and contrite. I am of a mind and temperament that is adverse to conflict or confrontation and I will concede when the time is ripe and I was keenly aware of the careless ways, marked by drug addiction, in which I had behaved through much of my life, so for my own well-being I had to move on from them and free myself from the insanity of trying to conform to the expectations of others.

It was with this broken heart and contrite spirit that I became ready to rend the veil of unbelief, which caused me to remain in an awful state of spiritual and mental blindness, and finally receive the answers to the questions that I had been searching for all my life.

I turned to best source of personal inspiration that I knew: The Book of Mormon.  It pointed my attention toward finding the The Sealed Portion. I found The Sealed Portion of the golden plates online and read it from cover to cover. The Sealed Portion led me to find the Marvelous Work and a Wonder^® and the Humanity Party^®. As a result of investigating and researching this new information, I am a much better person today than I ever have been. It seems I still do self-interested and self-destructive things, which things are contrary to my true desires and intentions, but I am more aware of those things now and I accept the responsibility for acting that way.

I am not a good example of one who has lived a righteous life, nor am I a good example of how someone should live according to the teachings of the Marvelous Work and a Wonder^®, but learning the Real Truth^® from the Marvelous Work and a Wonder^® has enhanced my ability to exist among others peacefully. It has increased my love, self-worth and value. The Real Truth^® has set me free, free from guilt, shame and expectations. It has changed the dynamic of my intelligence and improved my understanding of human reality. I now live with more foresight and awareness, and even though I am not a shining example of it, walking peaceably among the children of men is foremost in my mind and when I fail, I am now more inclined to look inward to examine what I did to make another person uncomfortable.

In my search for truth, I have found that everything I’ve ever wanted to know about human reality and religion is explained through the Marvelous Work and a Wonder^® and every solution to humanity’s problems is presented through the Humanity Party^®.

I would encourage you, the reader of this brief history of me, to read the books, from start to finish, of The Marvelous Work and a Wonder^® and investigate all of its information. See for yourself. Don’t trust the opinions of others. Check out the information and apply it to your life and see if it makes you a better person or not. I promise you, if you are sincere, with real intent, your investigation into these things will be good.

C. Bret Powelson

cbpowelson@gmail.com

801-427-5167