Ep 1166 ｜ Ex-Cultist Gives Harrowing Insight into Mysterious '2x2' Cult ｜ Guest： Elizabeth Coleman
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 8 minutes
Words per Minute
167.5303
Summary
Elizabeth Coleman left a highly restrictive religious group in Australia over 30 years ago, and her testimony is incredibly powerful and encouraging. As now we are seeing documentaries and all kinds of testimonies explode about the abuse that has occurred for decades in this cult, you will love Elizabeth s story and learn so much from it.
Transcript
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The cult with no name. Elizabeth Coleman left a highly restrictive secret religious group
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in Australia over 30 years ago, and her testimony is incredibly powerful and encouraging as
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now we are seeing documentaries and all kinds of testimonies explode about the abuse that
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has occurred for decades in this cult. You will love Elizabeth's story and learn so much
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from it. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to
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goodranchers.com, code Allie. That's goodranchers.com, code Allie.
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Elizabeth, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. If you could tell everyone who you are
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and what you do. Okay. My name is Elizabeth Coleman. I'm from Canberra, Australia. I'm
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a school administrator. I've been a Christian for about 30 years and came out of a very high
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control sect cult group that I grew up in. It was born into third and fourth generation
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from both my parents' sides. And what is the name of the cult?
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So this is the controversial part. They officially have never given themselves a name because they
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believe they are the only way. They don't need a name. And so they have never officially given
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themselves a name. We as ex-members have called them two-by-twos and we now officially call them
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that. It's not derogatory. It's just descriptive of the way that their ministry works going out in
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pairs. A little bit like the JWs or the Mormons, but probably a little bit more hardcore. So we call
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them the two-by-twos. They would deny having a name.
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Okay. So take us back. You say that you were born into this kind of nameless cult.
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So my dad, it goes back to his mother and my mother, it goes back to her grandmother. So
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I'm fourth generation on my mother's side, third generation on my father's side, every single
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aunt and uncle, cousin. And we had seven siblings on my mother's side, nine on my father's. I didn't
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have a single relative outside of the group. So I was born into that, grew up in it. We
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did go to a secular school. And the reason for that is we're really strongly conditioned
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against other Christians and other churches, really strongly conditioned. So all other churches
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were literally called churches of the devil and false churches. So we were actually quite
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scared of other Christians and other churches. That's how strong the conditioning was. And
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the important thing to know is that we were told continuously that we were the only church
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not started by a man, that we went all the way back to the original apostles. So they take
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their ministry from Matthew 10 and Luke 10, where Jesus sent out the disciples two-by-two.
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Um, they actually ignore some pretty important parts of those scripture where they were going
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only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. They weren't taking a bag. They weren't taking
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a script or purse. They were only to go to the villages that Jesus himself was about to
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go. But one of them, a Scotsman by the name of William Irvine in the late 1800s had a sudden
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epiphany that maybe this was Jesus' plan for ministry for all time. So they literally started,
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he came out of the faith mission. He was a member of the faith mission, had been converted.
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Uh, it comes out of Ireland and, um, William Irvine himself was converted
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by a Presbyterian minister in Ireland or in Scotland.
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A lot of these weird belief systems came out of the 1800s.
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Yes. So the two-by-twos arose at a very similar timing to the JWs and the Mormons and the
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Seventh-day Adventists. There was this, and the thing-
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And JWs is Jehovah's Witness, just in case people didn't know.
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Yes, sure. Yeah. Thank you. Um, so he was part of a ministry group of an evangelism group
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called the Faith Mission, which was a, I think a, um, an Irish organization and they still exist
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to this day, but they were not a church. Their idea was to go out preaching the gospel
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and people would then join local churches as Christians. Um, but he got frustrated with people
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joining other churches and somewhere along the way, he developed a real hatred of clergy
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in the established church and started to really bad mouth them.
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This Irvine person. And somewhere along the line, um, and I think it was through the influence
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of what somebody else had said to him. He started to believe that he was the chosen one, risen
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up by God to restore his true way on the earth. And this was in sending out ministers two by
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two, going out without money, going out on faith, um, not taking anything with them. And
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this is why all the other churches were false because they didn't go purely on faith. So they
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actually go out as unmarried, celibate, supposedly penniless preachers across the world. And they
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do it in males and females, pairs of both males and females. So William Irvine, rather than sending
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converted people back to established churches, started establishing his own church meetings in houses
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and having groups of converts meet in houses. And then they eventually developed their own
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baptism, bread and wine, became a completely separate group. Um, he ended up being excommunicated
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from the group as often happens with these groups that rise up. The leader can go a bit haywire.
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William Irvine had delusions of grandeur. He was one of the last prophets of revelation.
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This is what he believed. This is what he believed. Yes. He actually, he was, uh, it's very strongly,
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strong evidence that there was some womanizing going on. He ended up being cast out of the group
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and back in the early 1900s, before the internet, before easy world communication, they said,
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we'll just pretend this guy never existed. So they literally tried to do away with his existence.
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They destroyed all the records of his letters. They said, nobody's ever to mention his name again.
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We are the real McCoy. We go right back to the beginning. We are the only church not started by
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a man. We go back all the way to the shores of Galilee, which is what I was told.
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So they believe that they're Christians. And again, we keep saying they, because they don't call
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So, but they believed that they are Christians. Do they call themselves Christians to this day?
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they don't like using terms that any other churches use. So they've tried to shy away from
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terms like that. Um, but they would call themselves followers of Jesus, probably more readily than they
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would call themselves a Christian because they don't want to be associated with other people who call
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themselves Christian. They call themselves, if they're referring to their own group, they would
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call themselves the truth or the way, both of which are names which should only be assigned to Jesus.
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But they have made those terms absolutely synonymous with themselves as a group so that they're
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inextricably linked, which has become, uh, actually quite a heresy as you'll see their doctrine
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further down. Um, so I was always brought up being told that we're the only church not started by a
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man and they pretended this guy didn't exist. And as they moved outside the British Isles, they sent
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a number of their older workers. They call their ministers workers, uh, over to America. So there
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was some, um, pivotal people who came to America to start the group here to Australia. And as they moved
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outside the British Isles, the name of William Irvine was never heard. Yeah. So there was a guy in the
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1980s who was going to become a worker and ended up having an argument with some of the workers about
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going in. They were supposed to give up everything. He just wanted to take his parents on a trip to
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Ireland, uh, and across to some, some war places for his parents to see before he, um, joined the
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ministry. When it was discovered, he was going to, I think Ireland, uh, there was a lot of concern
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about that because they were worried he might uncover some of the truth about the past. Things
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went very bad. He ended up being declined to go into the ministry and he ended up researching the
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group and uncovering this truth of the origins and discovering this man called William Irvine.
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That's how William Irvine, how his name was kind of resurrected because you said that this cult worked
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very hard to ignore who this person was because if they acknowledged that, yeah, William Irvine was
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the guy who got this revelation, then their whole claim that this is the only true church that goes
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all the way back to the apostles, that would kind of be discounted by this Irvine guy. So this man,
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what's his name from the 1980s? William Irvine. No, from the 1980s. Oh, sorry. Doug Parker. Okay. So
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he was the man in the 1980s that kind of started pushing some things and trying to show people,
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okay, the origins of this are very sketchy. So bear in mind, this is still well before the days of the
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internet. Yeah. So he wrote a book called The Secret Sect. Okay. And very carefully researched,
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documented, footnoted. He knew that he would be in for a lot of trouble with people denying it.
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So he published the book himself. He put out newspaper advertisements for people to be able
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to see it. And it caused a lot of consternation, as you can imagine. People were ordered to buy the
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books to burn them. So other people couldn't buy them and read them. People were forbidden to read
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them. So they obeyed. We're talking about a very high control group that controlled
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many aspects of our lives. Women could not cut their hair, could not wear makeup or jewelry,
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could not wear pants. That's what I'm curious about. Let's get into some of their practices
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and doctrines, because some people might be thinking, okay, well, what actually made them
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a cult? So tell me about what they practiced and believe. So first of all, they're a cult because
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they don't believe in salvation by grace. They just don't. They do preach a false
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gospel. They teach that Jesus was the perfect example and he came to show us how to live and
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to show us the way, the way being their ministry, their form of ministry. That is the way. So you have
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to follow them as the middlemen that now stand as the gatekeepers between you and God, between you and
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Jesus. And in following them, you have to obey them. So whatever laws they make, however arbitrary
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they might be, that's what you need to be obeying. So I grew up in the 80s, 90s in Australia. And
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I have friends and relatives who have females who have never cut their hair in their life.
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Certainly no makeup, no jewelry, no television, no recorded music, no sports that's watching it or
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playing it. I desperately wanted to do ballet when I was younger, but it's too worldly. Anything that
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was too, so we had to be completely separated from the world. But if you got involved with
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an outsider, anybody outside, we called an outsider or a stranger. So it's always us or them.
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There would be punishments. So if you were a professing member of the group, which meant that
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you took part in their Sunday meetings. So they don't have any established churches, buildings. They
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don't believe in church buildings. They say that God doesn't dwell in buildings made by hands.
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Obviously, there's a lot of weird things around there, you know, hands-made houses as well. But
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they will only meet in a house, a personal house for their fellowship meetings. And then they will
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rent public schools or community halls to do their public preaching. But they say that they don't have
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their own church building. So you cannot find an actual presence of them anywhere. If you try to
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look them up online, you won't be able to find a location anywhere. They're very, very opaque
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and almost impossible to find, which is ironic for being the only true way. You're not going to find
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them if you go looking for them. No name, no buildings, no established presence anywhere.
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So Sunday morning meeting would be 10 to 20 people who are professing, coming together.
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Not like typical Christian hymns or their own hymns?
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Really good question. So they did actually take a lot of older, well-known Christian hymns written by
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Christians and incorporate them into their hymn book. But they changed wording that they didn't
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like. For example, there's a lot of controversy around the deity of Christ. They do not believe Jesus
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is God for the most part. Now, things I'm telling you will sometimes vary from person to person and
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region to region. But overall, they do not believe that Jesus is God because he's our elder brother.
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He's our perfect example. But God, no. And they have that in, I think, in common with the Jehovah's
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Witnesses and the Mormons. And I think there's a verse that says it's only by the Spirit that people
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can say, Jesus is Lord. And I think that that might be what comes into play here. They deny the deity
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of Christ. And they downplay who he is. And we didn't worship. And worship and praise would be quite
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foreign phrases to them because we're there to follow the way and to follow the ministry and to
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believe in the ministry and to obey the workers. They would say, oh, yes, Jesus is our example.
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But Jesus is God. No. They start to get very uncomfortable with that sort of language.
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Okay. And what was your experience like? From an early age, you went through all of these motions.
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You said you did go to a secular school. And yet you were told you can't be a part of the world.
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And we're also told that you're in basically hostile opposition, especially to these other
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people who call themselves Christians. So what was that like when you were a child?
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Look, I was actually very blessed in that I had a pretty normal and safe and secure childhood.
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So no drinking, no drugs, no smoking. It was actually a very clean childhood in that regard.
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And I am one of the very fortunate ones who was not abused in any way. We'll come to that a bit
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later. But it is a vehicle which sadly has been allowed terrible abuses to perpetuate. I myself did
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not suffer abuse. But it was a very rigidly, it was emotional and spiritual, particularly very strong
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spiritual bondage and very difficult to think for yourself. It's always an us and them mentality.
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And you develop a cognitive dissonance over everything that you come across. Everything
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that you read, we were especially not exposed to, I couldn't read any sort of Christian or theology
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books because that's them. That's the false religious world. And we always referred to them,
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ironically, as the Pharisees. The religious world is the Pharisees and we're not them. We're the only
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Wow. I hear so many similarities to a lot of subsections of like professing Christians today
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that may not be considered actual cults, but there are some similarities there. You do hear from
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some people that, oh, those who actually care about what the Bible says and want to apply it.
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They're the Pharisees. They're the others. We have the true Holy Spirit. It's interesting.
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Did you ever think it was strange that, for example, the workers, they believed, if I'm correct,
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that they had to sell all of their earthly possessions and be homeless, correct? So did you
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see that? What did that look like? So they, because they don't have any home per se, they
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travel around, they would come and live in our region for one to two years at a time before they
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would swap out for another incoming pair, always in, or nearly always in pairs. And then they would
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stay in the homes of members. So you're looking at a priesthood, a little bit like the Catholic
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church, unmarried celibate, but living in the homes of members. And I'm sure you've already
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got some red flags going up. So they would only come to see us maybe for a night or two, but they
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had absolute authority in our lives. So they would ring and say, we are coming on Wednesday. We are
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staying three nights and you didn't argue or what they said went. So if they said they were coming and
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it was a huge privilege to have them in your home. But it was also difficult because you had to put on
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the absolute best possible front. Everything had to be perfect. You had to make sure you didn't say
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anything, that you were doing anything, that you were allowed to be doing, that they saw anything in
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your home, that you, I mean, there's very funny stories about one of the, when microwaves first came
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in, one of the workers going to a house and becoming very angry at the couple who lived there about their
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television set. And they had no idea what he was talking about. They didn't have a television. And then he
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went and pointed to the microwave oven. So, and then there were people who, if they got separated or
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divorced for any reason, including adultery, could be stopped from taking part in a meeting. Their testimony
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and bread and wine stopped, which is effectively a form of excommunication. People who remarried
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in some parts of the world and particularly so in some parts of America here would be told they
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were not welcome to come back to the church unless they actually divorced the person that they had
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married. And, and many people have done that. They have divorced the person they were married to
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because they were told to by the workers. And the, I don't know the American scene as well,
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but I know that out of the West coast and the East coast, that one side is much more strict.
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One allows remarriage. The other one absolutely does not. And there was a division back in the
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earlier days where they're still part of the same group, but one of them took a much more hard line
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and they sort of separated into Eastern coast, um, doctrines on some of those matters. Yeah.
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Interesting. Um, so when you were a child and you were going to school with these people who
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obviously did not believe the things that you believed, were there, was there ever a moment
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where you thought, huh, my life looks a little different. I'm not allowed to cut my hair. I'm not
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allowed to wear pants. I'm not allowed to do ballet. These people are, do you remember ever a
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moment? All the time. All the time. It was a, it was an absolute constant, but we were always taught
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that, you know, we were the special people. Yeah. We were the special people and we were privileged
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people. We were told this a lot. And the thing you learn about growing up in a high control group,
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and I, I didn't know this until I started to dissect it when I was older, these mantras,
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these thought stopping cliche phrases are conditioned into you from a young age. And they're what you
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always repeat in your mind to stop yourself going outside the thought boundaries. So you develop
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these very strong thought boundaries that stop you moving outside the, the comfortable and the
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accepted. So one of the phrases was don't give the devil a foothold. So if you started thinking
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outside the box, you go, ah, don't give the devil a foothold. And you would physically stop yourself
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thinking any further on that front. And we're not talking about actual sin. Giving a devil a foothold
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in this context could have been you asking, but wait, the Bible doesn't say that.
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Absolutely. And that is a really good point because asking questions was about the worst thing you could
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do. You do not ask questions. You do not contradict a worker. You never question a worker. What the
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worker says goes? And things get pretty uncomfortable very quickly. And you learn from a young age not to
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ask questions. But one of the big questions I had, I remember as a teenager, and I, look, I did buy into
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the whole thing. I professed in the group at 16. I wanted to be faithful. I wanted to be zealous. I
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completely bought into it. But I remember sitting there under the preaching and hearing about Jesus
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and the way and the ministry and following and going, why did he have to be crucified? Like the
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crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection did not fit into the gospel at all. Like what was the point?
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There was absolutely no point in Jesus being crucified.
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And risen because he's an example and we're saved by being in the way and we're saved by following
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the workers. Jesus came to show us a perfect way. And they always say Jesus was, he came to give us
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the pattern. He was the pattern maker. And all of that, what about the crucifixion? Like where does that
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fit? Oh, it's just because people hated him. So that was a huge question in my mind that I just
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couldn't reconcile and couldn't work out at all. So yes, there were always questions, but we weren't
00:25:05.520
allowed to ask questions. And one of the ways I described it was I felt like there was a cage around
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my whole head with bands that were there in place. And if I would start to think too much, those bands would
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start to press and hurt. And I became later when I, when I met my husband, I, that really became a
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problem to the point where why am I not allowed to think? And I even, you know, went back to God
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created me with a mind. God gave me the ability to think and reason. Is God saying I can't think or
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reason? That's the point I came to, um, early on when I was wrestling with how do I step outside the,
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the boundaries, the conditioned boundaries that I had been learned that you could,
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you couldn't think past the, the letting the devil in, which was a really big fear and having a
00:26:01.100
doubting spirit or a rebellious spirit, all of these things that we were taught that we had if we
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questioned or tried to step outside the boundaries. Yeah. Does this group teach that all other people
00:26:14.560
outside of the way are going to hell? Effectively, yes, literally no. So if you ask them, they will say
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almost without fail, we don't judge. But if you leave, they will say you have lost out, you're going
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to hell. They will say that to you. They will never say that to an outsider. Um, but it's effectively
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true. They believe that in their heart of hearts. Um, if you leave your parents, your friends, your
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family will be absolutely devastated and, um, know that you're going to a lost, they'll say you're
00:26:48.780
going to a lost eternity. But if you specifically ask them that, they will say, well, we don't know
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and we can't judge. Yeah. And what does the doctrine making look like if William Irvine and his
00:27:01.680
principles or some of them, I guess, had been abandoned? What does the leadership and the
00:27:08.120
rulemaking of this group actually look like? Really good question. So they would deny that
00:27:15.940
they are like other churches in having a hierarchy and an establishment and an organization. One of the
00:27:22.580
things they very often say is we are not an organization because they're just a ministry. Um,
00:27:27.940
it's completely false. They do actually have now a well-established organization hierarchy.
00:27:32.380
They just keep it completely hidden. So, um, over the house churches, they have elders,
00:27:39.160
which are just ordinary members who are married and have families. And it will usually be, um,
00:27:44.740
the father whose house the meeting is in, who's the elder. Out of the workers, there are junior
00:27:51.420
workers, there are elder workers, there are senior workers, there are overseers who would be in
00:27:56.860
charge of a state or a country, depending on the size of the place. Um, and we've even found out
00:28:04.560
more recently that now and then overseers from each state or country will come together for more
00:28:11.840
worldwide or world specific meetings. Um, they very careful not to record anything officially or to
00:28:22.340
have anything written down. So all the rules, they absolutely exist, but they will say,
00:28:28.180
we don't have any rules. What rules? And we'll say, well, what about, you know, the things that
00:28:32.920
we're not allowed to do? Oh, they're not rules. The spirit just will convince you of those things
00:28:36.660
and the spirit will convict you. And if you're truly professing that you will naturally start to
00:28:42.920
do all these things because the spirit's convicting you of that. So they're very careful not to have
00:28:47.180
written records anywhere. Wow. Another pause to remind you guys about share the arrows. We just
00:28:59.920
locked in our last two speakers to be announced, but we've already announced an incredible lineup
00:29:06.780
with Elisa Childers and Katie Faust. We've got Taylor Dukes from Taylor Dukes Wellness and Shauna
00:29:13.380
Holman from A Little Less Toxic for our health panel. Uh, we have also got Francesca Battistelli,
00:29:21.580
Grammy award-winning artist, leading worship. Ginger Duggar Vuolo and I will be having a really
00:29:28.500
good conversation on stage. It's just going to be so solid. And then we will also have a panel that is
00:29:34.940
focused on motherhood and child discipleship, but this is for women of any age in any life stage.
00:29:42.880
And I want you to come. I want you to come by yourself. I want you to come with friends or
00:29:47.220
with family. If you do come alone, don't worry. You will make lifelong friends. This is such an
00:29:52.380
edifying and unique day. Women need good theology and solid apologetics. We can stand being challenged,
00:30:00.460
being pushed. And that is what share the arrows is about. It will imbue you by the grace of God with
00:30:07.780
the courage that you need to contend with the powers that be and with the hostile culture that we are
00:30:13.740
facing, that our children are facing. So go to share the arrows.com, get your tickets. The seats are
00:30:21.680
limited. And so once we run out, we run out and I don't want that to happen to you. So go to
00:30:26.100
share the arrows.com, get your tickets, book all of the logistics and everything today. Share the arrows.com.
00:30:32.260
Obviously, one of the hallmarks of a cult is being extremely legalistic because even though they are
00:30:42.900
calling other people Pharisees, a cult believes that you have to abide by all of their doctrines.
00:30:48.040
As you said, no matter how arbitrary, that is the way to salvation. And you tell a story about
00:30:54.720
a family who had to attend a meeting and their son said, I've got these stomach pains. And they said,
00:31:02.520
well, we can't miss this meeting. And then a tragic outcome resulted from that. Can you tell us that
00:31:10.640
story? Yeah. So it wasn't until I wrote that story and it appeared in my book that someone related
00:31:19.260
to me came and said, that was actually my uncle. So you couldn't miss a meeting no matter what.
00:31:25.680
You go to every single meeting. So we had Sunday morning meeting, Sunday night meeting. They were
00:31:31.140
in generally in homes, Wednesday night meeting in a home. And then they would have public preaching for
00:31:36.480
a good part of the year that we had to go to when the workers were in town. So it could be a Sunday
00:31:42.700
night and a Thursday night as well as the Sunday morning. And so sometimes we were going to
00:31:47.780
meetings four times a week, sometimes up to an hour away. And you did not miss a meeting. People
00:31:53.280
would come after you and ask, especially the workers, if you were missing meetings. So you
00:31:57.560
could not miss for any reason. And this was some decades ago now, but yes, the younger boy had
00:32:04.820
terrible stomach pains and said to his parents, he was in terrible pain. They said he had to go to
00:32:09.940
meeting. Everybody goes to meeting. They all went in the car. He was in too much pain to get out of the
00:32:14.600
car. So they left him in the car and went inside to the meeting. And when they came back out, his
00:32:20.200
appendix had actually ruptured and he died. Yeah.
00:32:27.440
Wow. So that is the stock that they put into following the rules.
00:32:36.200
We don't want to be excluded from this. You mentioned when you were 16 that you professed.
00:32:43.720
So they, I find it's interesting. They don't actually make a public profession of faith the
00:32:49.360
way that we would as Christians, but in their gospel meetings, everybody comes along and just
00:32:55.500
sits and listens while the workers preach. So one worker will preach, there'll be a hymn in between,
00:33:00.560
the other worker will preach. And then once or twice a year, they will test the meeting. So they
00:33:06.440
will say, if anybody wants to follow Jesus in this way during the last verse of this hymn,
00:33:12.660
they're to stand to their feet. So that means you're committing yourself to life in the group
00:33:19.520
as a member. You can now give your testimony. But you still have to prove yourself for up to
00:33:27.160
several years to see if you're worthy to ask for baptism. And it's not until after baptism that you can
00:33:33.740
take bread and wine in a Sunday morning meeting. So I could never actually bring myself to be
00:33:39.580
baptised in the group and I wasn't. But I did stand to my feet when I was 16, which sounds maybe
00:33:47.660
young, but I was like the latest of my peer group. A lot of my friends had professed when they were
00:33:54.180
13, 14, even 12, some as young as 11 or 8. So I was actually pretty late coming to the party and
00:34:02.620
that was probably due to some of my questions about it. But at the time I was 16, the thing was though
00:34:12.480
that I felt when I professed, I felt as though I was committing my life to God rather than to the
00:34:19.960
group. And afterwards people are coming up and nearly crying and hugging me and congratulating
00:34:25.480
me. And I was a bit bewildered by that and thinking this is to do with me and God. I don't
00:34:32.100
know why you're all so excited. So I really did feel it was my relationship with God and I felt
00:34:40.180
convicted to do it. I wasn't doing it because I felt that I should. I know many people would and did do
00:34:47.960
that, but I felt like it was the right time for me and I felt like I was committing my life to God
00:34:53.100
at that time. Yeah. Tell me about meeting your husband pretty shortly after that when you were
00:34:59.020
17. Yes. So this is a really unusual story. So in Canberra, we finished high school at the age of 16
00:35:07.720
and then there's often two years called college, the ages of 17, 18, before we go on to university,
00:35:13.380
if we're going on to university from the ages of 18, 19 onwards. So I, it's a new school,
00:35:21.140
new buildings. And the first week, I think it was the first time I'd walked into my English class in
00:35:28.160
this new school. I, I saw this guy across the room and something went through my mind, like writing on
00:35:34.100
a wall. What would you say if someone told you that was the man you were going to marry one day?
00:35:38.340
Uh, well, I, I freaked out a bit, like, what was that? Where, where did that come from? And then
00:35:45.140
my immediate follow-up thought was that's never going to happen. Because he's an outsider. Well,
00:35:50.580
he's an outsider and, um, I, I wasn't even attracted to him. My, my husband says it was hate
00:35:55.860
at first sight. I wasn't attracted to him. I had no idea. I thought that was, that was weird and I'm,
00:36:01.420
I'm never going to talk to him. And so then I will never marry him. I'll never have anything to do
00:36:05.080
with him. You were disturbed by your own thoughts though. I was very disturbed. Because it felt like
00:36:08.420
it was coming from the outside. It felt like it had come from the outside and that's the weirdest
00:36:13.920
thing ever. And that's not going to come true. And I'm going to make sure it doesn't come true.
00:36:17.640
Yeah. Those, those were my, that was my response. So anytime we did have to interact and we were
00:36:23.120
putting a group assignment together, I was quite rude and abrupt to him. Yeah. Um, but as that year
00:36:29.820
went on, I started to get a really pressing burden that I had to speak to him and I ignored it for
00:36:38.060
months. I just ignored it. You know, my mind playing tricks on me. This is ridiculous. I've
00:36:42.540
got to make sure that this premonition or whatever it was, doesn't come true. Um, and then I eventually
00:36:47.880
started praying about it. And for a long time, I just said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
00:36:54.440
it was not going to happen. And then I said, why, why, why, why? And then my friends started
00:37:00.420
saying to me, cause obviously I wasn't going to tell anybody about this. Um, my friend said,
00:37:04.520
look, something's eating away at you. We don't know what it is, but you need to get it sorted.
00:37:09.600
And I got to the point where I wasn't eating or sleeping properly. And it was on my mind all the
00:37:14.940
time. Like I just couldn't function. So I, I finally literally said to God, Lord, I give up. I just give
00:37:22.960
up. Like I will, I will talk to this guy. I have no idea what you want me to say, but I give up.
00:37:28.440
So the next day at school where we crossed paths, where he came out of a building and I was going in,
00:37:34.700
um, he had a hole in the side of his nose and blood all over his face. And I said, what happened
00:37:42.360
to you? Um, he'd been attacked by a bird on the way to school that morning. We have these birds that
00:37:48.540
get very violent during breeding season. Australia things. Yeah. Australian things.
00:37:52.840
So magpies. Um, so he'd been attacked by a magpie as he'd ridden his bike to school.
00:37:58.860
Yeah. So they go for the eyes and fortunately it didn't get his eye. And you, if you're riding,
00:38:03.180
you wear glasses to make sure they can't get, I know, I know. Sorry, normal part of life in our
00:38:11.540
You know what? But God sent that magpie to spark y'all's conversation that day.
00:38:16.620
Yeah. But of course that's not the way I, I saw it. I mean, that was certainly the opening.
00:38:21.080
Um, and, um, I invited him to come and have lunch with me and we became friends from that
00:38:25.600
day. And from the very beginning, he told me straight up that he was a Christian and
00:38:30.840
I was like, Oh, well, God wants to introduce me to the, he wants me to introduce him to
00:38:38.240
Like I have the true way. He says he's a Christian. Well, obviously God wants to bring him into
00:38:42.300
my group. So that was my aha moment. Like, Oh, that's what it's all about. Um, so we became,
00:38:50.400
we developed a solid friendship and were friends for, um, probably a good year before things
00:38:57.460
developed more romantically. And then that's when things got really difficult. Um, because
00:39:03.300
my, all of my faith and what I believed was starting to be queried. He was trying to find
00:39:13.100
out what I believed and what this group was and what they believed and came along to some
00:39:18.060
of the meetings and told me some of the concerns that he had. So, um, we had a courtship over
00:39:23.980
three to four years, but certainly after the three year mark, um, things were really difficult
00:39:30.260
and I couldn't see a way out of where we were. Um, I believed something very different to what
00:39:37.920
he believed and how could there be a future in it? And I just kept saying, Lord, why did
00:39:44.780
you, why did you put me here? There's no future in this relationship. I've become involved with
00:39:49.460
this person who isn't going to join the way and I can't leave. And things were really
00:39:55.840
difficult. So were you thinking at that point that your purpose in dating him all those years
00:40:00.060
was to bring him to the way? Yes, absolutely. Or did you, okay. So it wasn't like you were
00:40:05.600
in defiance or in rebellion. No. You thought that this was evangelism. Yep. Okay. Yeah. So of course
00:40:13.640
he was asking lots of questions that started sparking difficult things in my brain. So one
00:40:22.160
of the earlier things he said to me was, look, I had to talk to your workers and they don't
00:40:27.960
believe that Jesus is God. And I'm like, what do you mean? Jesus is not God. So that was one
00:40:34.600
of the earlier things that was raised. Um, but the further things went along and I tried to
00:40:39.920
talk to the workers about it and they had, this was a little way, probably two to three
00:40:44.720
years into our relationship. And one of them said, look, we've had a talk to him. He has
00:40:48.780
too many questions. We don't think he's ever going to come on board, but don't worry. You'll
00:40:52.360
be right. There are plenty more fish in the sea. Like, you know, this is obviously this
00:40:56.420
relationship's a dead end time to cut him off. Um, yeah, but I finished college and started
00:41:05.280
going to university and I actually, I didn't never finish my degree. I was only there.
00:41:09.600
And I have to say that was quite unusual. Um, most of my female friends had left school
00:41:14.460
at 16. They had not even gone to college. My mother was always, um, never quite with the
00:41:22.740
rules and she really wanted me to get a further education. Um, my father didn't, and that was
00:41:29.280
his background. You didn't get a further education, particularly as a female. So me going to university
00:41:34.460
was unusual, but my mother was pushing quite hard for that for me. So they had, um, on
00:41:42.980
campus preaching, evangelical preaching. And so I started going along to that because it
00:41:50.020
was the only place I could go that my parents and the church didn't know I was going. Because
00:41:54.320
if I went to church, I would be missing our usual meetings. So, um, that was my rebellious
00:41:59.980
days at university was sneaking into evangelical preaching on campus. Um, and they, I, they
00:42:07.560
had it on a Tuesday and a Thursday lunchtime and they were actually using the same sermon
00:42:12.880
for both, but I didn't, but I, so I would go along to both and hear the same sermon and
00:42:16.680
then different one the following week. Um, and one day the preacher was speaking on Hebrews
00:42:23.980
and the Old Testament sacrifices, um, and dealing with the sins of the people and then Jesus
00:42:31.840
being the once for all sacrifice for the sin of the people. And it was like the roof had
00:42:38.220
lifted off and I was like, how can I have been looking at the Bible my whole life and sitting
00:42:44.880
under preaching my whole life and nobody ever told me this. Jesus is the once for all sacrifice
00:42:49.620
and all the Old Testament sacrifices, uh, you know, a picture of this to come. And that was
00:42:57.640
the first really major revelation to me. But from that time, uh, came the period of what do I do now?
00:43:09.720
How do I leave? Leaving still seemed incomprehensible, but I got to a point where I realized it was too
00:43:16.980
late to walk back inside the dark room and shut the door. It felt like the door or the window had
00:43:23.560
been opened and I had to walk through it. And it was terrifying to leave the room where I'd grown
00:43:29.660
up. It's actually more like a village. It's a whole cultural tribal village that you belong to. And
00:43:35.140
once you leave that village, the gates close behind you and that's it. You know, you have none of your
00:43:41.140
former life. You lose all of your friends and family in the group. You're now an outsider and
00:43:46.980
that's a huge thing. Um, but I also realized I'd come too far to just shut the door. I couldn't
00:43:52.700
stay in there. My mind had been opened, um, to too much and I'd seen and learned too much to be able
00:44:00.940
to close the door. So when I, and I was sitting on the fence for a very long time when I finally left
00:44:07.960
because I was, I'd gotten to the point of being in tremendous emotional and mental and spiritual
00:44:15.040
turmoil. 19. You're 19. I'm 19. And did you still have a relationship with David at all?
00:44:20.840
Yes. So we were still seeing each other and he was getting a lot of counsel from friends and family
00:44:28.140
that I was too brainwashed. I was never going to leave. He, he needed to think about ending this
00:44:34.600
relationship and he prayed about it a lot. And he said, the only answer he got all of those years
00:44:41.680
was just wait, wait. He said, that's the only word God would give me weight. Yeah.
00:44:52.060
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Okay. So you're 19, you're struggling with all of this. How does it actually come to a head? When do
00:46:12.520
you actually decide to leave and what does it look like? So it got to a point where I realized I had to
00:46:16.540
leave. So I, because we had the meeting in our home and my dad was an elder, I had to set up the lounge
00:46:22.720
room every Sunday and vacuum it and set up the chairs. And on a Sunday morning, um, before the
00:46:29.340
meeting, before people arrived, I was in the kitchen and I said to my dad, I'm not, I'm not coming to the
00:46:36.560
meeting. And like, that was a huge thing. Like, and I said, I'm, I'm, I'm going down to, and David's church
00:46:44.820
was actually within walking distance, um, about two kilometers, probably a bit over a mile in, in your,
00:46:51.000
um, distances. And dad was, um, pretty gentle. And he, he looked at me in bewilderment and he said,
00:47:00.820
but, but you know, that this is the true way. And I said, dad, I really don't, I really don't know
00:47:07.520
that. So he went out and told my mother and then a storm came in the door, um, in that my mother
00:47:15.320
just came in and in a rage, she was absolutely distraught and she yelled and she cried and
00:47:22.060
you're going to kill your father and he's going to have a heart attack and die because of your
00:47:26.680
rebelliousness. And I can't believe you're doing, you know, all of this sort of really, she was just
00:47:31.740
absolutely distraught. So I never went back to meetings from that day. Um, but I was also
00:47:39.700
plunged into a really time of terrible darkness where I couldn't find my feet. Yeah. And I
00:47:50.520
really felt like, was I actually leaving God in, in leaving the group? I,
00:47:58.280
I knew a sense of the gospel, but I didn't know how I could grasp hold of it personally.
00:48:07.940
How could it be mine? Um, and I didn't find out until a year or two later that I was actually
00:48:14.420
suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and that many other people in circumstances similar
00:48:21.400
to mine go through very similar thing. Um, being completely separated from everything that you've
00:48:29.180
known, trying to break free of that conditioning, because I still had all of that conditioning.
00:48:33.700
There's still a very deep fear in me. What if I've done the wrong thing? What if I'm leaving for David?
00:48:39.560
What if I've, it just felt like a massive spiritual battle.
00:48:44.120
Were you cut off from your family from that point on?
00:48:46.340
So they don't do official shunning, but, um, it, it does happen in various ways to various people,
00:48:53.920
depending on the circumstances. No, I was not cut off from my family, but it became impossible for
00:49:00.340
me to stay living there because, um, my mother in particular at that time did everything she could
00:49:07.200
to stop me leaving the house on a Sunday morning. Um, she would try and delay me. I still had to set up
00:49:12.380
the meeting room and I was trying to, to get out before members would arrive. Things just got very
00:49:18.240
tough and she was genuinely terrified for me. So whenever I would come home from work, she would
00:49:25.180
be crying and saying, um, something terrible is going to happen to you something because they have
00:49:30.400
this deep belief that if you leave, you're going to die suddenly. You're going to have a car accident
00:49:36.320
or God's going to punish you and you're going to be struck down dead. And she was absolutely terrified.
00:49:42.560
So she was always, um, crying and telling me something terrible was going to happen to me. And I was
00:49:47.360
already not in a great way myself. So I ended up having to move out. Um, I think within about six months
00:49:53.840
of me leaving and I did some house sitting jobs and then I, I rented an apartment with a friend. So it did
00:50:00.880
become very, but all the rest of the members of the church, even the workers, nobody contacted me,
00:50:06.960
nobody at all. So it was as though I had ceased to exist effectively. Yeah. And do you remember
00:50:13.100
when you fully not only understood the gospel, but accepted it and realized where you actually
00:50:21.720
belonged in the body of Christ? Yes. And I might cry here somewhere. That's okay.
00:50:25.860
So things got really bad and I was working by now. I had taken a public service job. I had left my
00:50:32.040
degree to start a public service job, um, in, in a traineeship, a work study program. And I was in
00:50:38.360
a bad way. And the people I worked with had, didn't really know what was going on in my life, but they
00:50:44.040
were very compassionate. And my supervisor actually found me curled up under my desk one day. I was just in
00:50:49.960
such emotional pain. Yeah. And he told me I really needed to go home and, um, do whatever I needed
00:50:57.260
to do. And I went to David's pastor and I was very much at the end of myself. I, I had an understanding
00:51:06.320
of what the gospel was, but I just didn't understand how I could take hold of it. And he sat with me for,
00:51:11.960
I don't know, it might've been an hour or two and he really explained the gospel to me and he used a,
00:51:20.300
um, a telephone directory. And, um, I'll, I'll use one of these books if you don't mind as example.
00:51:26.020
So he said, you know, here is you and, and God looking at you and here are all your sins. This is
00:51:33.680
between you and God, everything that you've ever done, will do, um, the whole past of your sins,
00:51:39.620
all of that is on you and between you and God. And Jesus, when he died on the cross, he, he took
00:51:46.720
that punishment and he took all of your sins and put them on him. When Jesus, God looks at Jesus,
00:51:53.420
he sees all those sins on him being punished. And when God looks at you, you can be seen as
00:51:59.420
completely clean and righteous as Christ because your sins are no longer on you. They're all on
00:52:04.800
Christ. So he used that example and also explained to me how much the workers sounded like the Pharisees
00:52:13.800
putting heavy burdens on people, taking the place of pride at the, at the, the mealtimes and in their
00:52:22.340
lifestyle. And it was, we, we adulated them. Um, they were, uh, our authority. And to me, that was a
00:52:31.280
complete flip of everything that I had ever known because the religious world was the Pharisees,
00:52:36.840
right? But no, these men I had grown up under the authority of, they were the Pharisees with,
00:52:42.400
with the rules and the regulations and, um, putting themselves in, in the place of Christ. And I really
00:52:49.080
understood and I still said to him, you know, but what do I need to do? And he said, that's it. You
00:52:54.660
can't do. It's not about doing. You need to accept. You need to believe. Um, that's all you
00:53:01.820
have to do. There is no doing. Jesus has done all of the doing. And I fully accepted and believed from
00:53:08.360
that time. And, um, later when I read parts of Pilgrim's Progress, I felt exactly like Christian when
00:53:16.020
the, when the rock, the boulder rolls off the back. Yeah. That I had set down this heavy load of,
00:53:22.720
because the language we use in the group is, um, about being worthy. You know, we're, we're not
00:53:28.920
worthy and we're trying to be worthy and we're trying. And the language in testimonies is, I just
00:53:33.600
want to go out and try and do better in the coming days. I want to try and be worthy and Lord, make me
00:53:40.320
worthy. It's the language they use all the time because there is no assurance because it's all based
00:53:45.340
on their own performance, on the keeping of rules, on the following of the workers. You never know if
00:53:50.400
you're doing enough. Um, so all of that was gone. So I was a Christian and a believer from that time.
00:54:01.320
And, uh, a few, probably a few weeks or months, I'm not sure of the timing later, I was praying by
00:54:07.560
the side of my bed one night and that voice came from the outside again. You need to be baptized.
00:54:13.200
Baptized. And I went, what? You need to be baptized. So I was, yeah.
00:54:29.160
I think it was about July when I was 21 because I got married the following year when I was,
00:54:38.060
Yeah. And where were you baptized? Were you baptized at David's church?
00:54:43.220
And then you got married. So that outside voice that you had tried so hard to suppress in the
00:54:49.540
Yes. Which I never thought would, um, ever come true. Then we, yeah, we got married when, um,
00:54:53.940
we were around, Dave was 20 and I was 21. Yeah. So we'd been together for almost four years by,
00:55:11.180
Last, I just want to remind you guys to please support me, support the show and support everyone
00:55:18.620
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00:55:26.700
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00:56:42.020
I'm sure that after you became a Christian, there was such a burden on you for the people that were
00:56:51.360
still in that cult, especially your family. So I'm sure you tried to explain to especially your
00:56:59.340
parents. I did. And especially the workers, none of whom contacted me, which is very strange. These
00:57:04.500
are supposed to be your spiritual leaders and you disappear and they never contact you or follow
00:57:09.580
you up or anything. And I thought, they don't know the gospel. I have to go and tell them. Like,
00:57:15.260
I have to go and tell them. So I rang them and said, want to see you? Want to talk to you? And
00:57:20.620
they were like, no. And it took quite some pressing on my part. And eventually one of them
00:57:28.240
on the phone said, we will only come and see you if you never tell anybody we came to see you.
00:57:35.600
You are not allowed to repeat any of the conversation we have with you. If you tell anybody that we
00:57:40.860
have been to see you or repeat anything that we have said to you, we will deny it. So we will call
00:57:46.480
you a liar for telling the truth. Wow. Okay. So they came and I tried to explain. Well, there
00:57:56.000
were several different instances with several different lots of workers. One of them, I tried
00:58:03.560
to explain how we can have full assurance and salvation now. They called me presumptuous and
00:58:08.960
arrogant. And I said, well, you know, what are you going to say when you die and God says why he
00:58:15.360
should let you into heaven? Well, I've done my best. And I said, well, I'm going to say I'm trusting
00:58:20.940
in Jesus' blood. And when I tried to tell them who Jesus really was, they used the old King James
00:58:28.940
version. And I had an NIV at the time. And they said, oh, that's just a clever NIV translation.
00:58:35.240
They didn't know that it was a legitimate copy of the Bible. And I said, you know,
00:58:41.440
scripture clearly says that Jesus is God. And they refused to open their Bible and read the same
00:58:47.380
passage from theirs. They just said, we're very sorry this has happened to you. We want you to go
00:58:52.040
home and pray that Jesus will open your blind eyes and we will take you back when you come to your senses.
00:58:58.240
That's what they told me. The other ones, I think that was just after I'd left. And the following
00:59:07.300
year I tried with the next pair that came into town. And by then I had come in contact. So
00:59:13.200
the internet was in its earliest sort of days of common use by now. And I started finding other
00:59:20.720
people overseas in America here who had left and become Christians. And this was such
00:59:26.760
a massive thing for me because I didn't know anybody who had left. I wasn't in contact with
00:59:34.420
anyone else who had left. Certainly not in contact with anybody who had become a Christian. So
00:59:38.100
you really, it's hard to have a lot of confidence. You think, am I the only one who this has happened
00:59:48.180
to? So got in contact with people overseas. They had started writing books about their experiences in
00:59:54.460
coming out of the group and also pamphlets. You know, what does this group believe? What's the
00:59:58.680
gospel? What is truth? And they had sent me some of those and I gave those to the workers. And I said,
01:00:04.560
look, I've been lied to. I've been deceived about the origins of the group. I discovered the truth
01:00:10.140
about the history. They were really angry about me bringing that up. We are not going to talk about
01:00:15.140
this. It's none of your business. Because you've left, it's none of your business now. Leave us alone.
01:00:19.780
And I said, well, I'm one of the people you deceived and you have a responsibility to tell
01:00:25.280
people the truth. And I will be telling the truth to anybody who asks me. Well, from that time, they
01:00:31.320
officially and publicly put out a smear campaign against me. I got some really weird phone calls
01:00:39.240
from people I didn't know in other states saying, who are you or what have you done? Because we've
01:00:44.440
been told that no one's allowed to contact you or talk to you, but we don't know why. Like there was
01:00:49.500
just one or two brave people who said, what have you actually done? But they were so afraid,
01:00:55.680
which is ridiculous. Like I'm a 19, 20 year old, 21 year old woman and they're just all
01:01:01.220
running scared and saying, nobody's allowed to talk to Elizabeth because what I had was
01:01:09.660
Yeah. So 18 months after I left or was married around that time, when I got some of the books
01:01:19.900
and pamphlets from America, I left them at my parents' house and my mother picked them
01:01:25.420
up and started to read and bells and flags, red flags started going up in her mind. And
01:01:32.440
she ended up being accused of giving some of the pamphlets that I had, two new converts that
01:01:38.100
were coming along to their public meetings. She actually hadn't, but she was accused and
01:01:45.260
excommunicated because of that. And also because, I think it was mostly because she had started
01:01:50.640
asking questions of the workers and they suddenly saw her as a huge problem. And so they just
01:01:58.080
excommunicated her and she refused to go along and just sit silently in the meetings as a person
01:02:05.360
under punishment when she hadn't done anything that they'd accused her of doing. So that was the
01:02:10.300
end for her. And she started ferociously reading her Bible and suddenly seeing the gospel for the
01:02:17.600
first time and then coming to church with us. My dad remained as an elder for another six years.
01:02:26.520
And when his mother died, he contacted the workers to have them come to take the meeting out of his
01:02:33.920
house. The day they arrived on the doorstep, a major firestorm had swept through Canberra and the whole
01:02:40.640
suburb had been raised. Theirs was one of the only houses left standing, but substantially damaged. And
01:02:46.160
so my dad never went back from that day either. So both of them became Christians and had left. And I
01:02:57.580
have two younger brothers who have both left. So all my immediate family is out. All of my aunts and
01:03:04.380
uncles, both sides are still in. But I do have quite a few cousins who have come out now, some who are
01:03:13.380
And you mentioned, before we close, I want to make sure that we talk about this because you alluded to
01:03:20.260
earlier that when the workers would come stay at families' homes, since they were essentially
01:03:26.120
homeless, this caused some problems. And you've written about some of the sexual abuse allegations
01:03:30.920
within the cult. Can you just talk about that a little bit?
01:03:35.000
So back in the time I left, it was very hard. I didn't know much about this at all. And it was very
01:03:40.260
hard to know much. It was all very hidden and quiet. As the years went on, I started to hear stories of
01:03:48.140
people having been abused by workers staying in their homes. And we're talking child sexual assault.
01:03:54.460
And almost exactly two years ago, or two years ago this week, things blew wide open here in America
01:04:01.760
that one of their most revered overseer workers was found dead in a motel room, which is strange in
01:04:07.540
itself because they didn't stay in motels. They stayed in the homes of members. It turned out that,
01:04:13.120
well, there's been a lot of money stockpiled behind the scenes. They don't actually go out
01:04:18.980
on faith, but everything's completely opaque. There's no transparency. Nobody knows how much
01:04:23.080
money is back there. But he had been staying. He had a card from a motel chain. He had a credit card.
01:04:29.060
He had been meeting multiple sexual partners, including underage partners, for a very long time,
01:04:36.540
this whole secret hidden life. He was so revered that when he died, several hundred eulogies were
01:04:44.860
written about him by members, so many that they actually published a book of them. And then a few
01:04:51.120
of the sister workers, I believe, started coming forward and saying, we have a problem with this
01:04:57.860
guy being so revered. He abused us. And that letter from them or information about that, which was
01:05:07.300
supposed to stay contained within the group, got leaked and went viral and suddenly opened the
01:05:14.400
floodgates to a whole Me Too movement within the two by twos within the last two years, especially here
01:05:19.660
in America. And we had people coming forward in the dozens and then the hundreds and then the
01:05:26.640
thousands. And last year, the FBI announced a worldwide investigation into the group because
01:05:34.760
workers who had abused were often then shifted across state lines and across countries to re-offend
01:05:44.040
in other places. So they would take the offender, move them somewhere else, try to smooth things
01:05:49.760
over in the local area, send the perpetrator elsewhere. And the whole group is so perfectly,
01:05:56.400
unfortunately, set up for abuse because of the authority that these people hold in the minds of
01:06:03.740
the members. You don't question a worker. A worker cannot do wrong. They're God's only true agent.
01:06:08.040
How could they possibly be doing these things? They're the true way, the true ones.
01:06:12.560
So there's been a massive exodus of thousands of people in the last two years and more stories
01:06:21.860
being uncovered. And now there's just an explosion of YouTubes and TikToks and documentaries. There's
01:06:28.500
been some Hulu documentaries about abuse within the group and they're starting to be recognised on the
01:06:34.580
world stage for the first time. Because you have to remember beforehand, there were lots of
01:06:38.960
occasional stories and they'd be reported somewhere locally, but they're unrecognisable because there's
01:06:45.120
no name to attach to it. So something happening in three different places, you would never put it
01:06:50.540
together as being the same group, but they're starting to be internationally recognised. And it'll
01:06:55.880
be really interesting to see what comes out of the FBI investigation. And anybody who knows of this
01:07:02.300
group who has been in this group, who knows of abuse, now is the time to contact FBI. Even if you don't
01:07:08.440
live in America, there are, they will come and see you and interview you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for
01:07:16.020
being a part of that and for sharing your story. Can you tell people where they can find your book?
01:07:21.900
Um, my book, Cult to Christ is available pretty much anywhere online, um, through Amazon and ebook and
01:07:29.680
Kindle. Um, so yes. And also, um, I would really like to mention that because the history has been
01:07:37.480
so hidden and disclosed, Doug Parker's book, The Secret Sect is no longer in print, but, um, my friend
01:07:44.360
Cherie, who was one of the first people I came in contact with, who sent me all those pamphlets years
01:07:48.500
ago. She has written the definitive book of the whole history of the group called Preserving the
01:07:53.660
Truth. And that's designed to be a really, um, non-confrontational book, which just has all the
01:08:00.380
facts of the history that you can find out. Um, it's not meant to be a theological book. Um, it's
01:08:06.060
supposed to be non-threatening for, um, anybody in the group to be able to learn more about the history
01:08:10.840
of how the group evolved and where it's come to today. Yeah. Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much.
01:08:15.980
I really appreciate you taking the time to share your story. Thanks, Sally.