My Life Story

I was born in 1960 in New Orleans, Louisiana to a Roman Catholic father and a Jewish mother whom had chosen the Catholic faith as a teenager. She was deemed unacceptable in the social circles of my father in New Orleans due to her Jewish heritage, so much so that my older sister was denied entrance into the Catholic school run by the same order of nuns that had educated my mother both in high school in Illinois and in college in New York, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. When this happened my mother had finally had enough of New Orleans and we moved to Denver, Colorado in 1966.

My schooling began in early 1964 at a nursery school called Miss Murkadell's. My sister attended that school but got really sick at the Christmas break, and our doctor advised keeping her out of the school for the spring term. So my parents, Tom and Janice Tomeny, who had paid a full year's tuition, sent me instead. I was only 3 1/2 years old, with a summer birthday, and all the other children were at least 4 1/2 years old. I knew almost nothing that first term. As I knew not the letters, numbers, songs, and dances so essential to fitting in at nursery school. And at  my age, I was barely potty trained. I was an outcast.

But perhaps my second year of nursery school was even worse. For, unlike the rest of the new crop of children in the fall of 1965, I "knew everything" since I had attended half a year already. I was again an outcast as even 4 year olds have little tolerance for a know it all. When I attended St. Francis, our parish elementary school, for kindergarten, I continued to do well "academically' as a 5 year old.

1966 was traumatic. We had been taught by our maternal grandmother that New Orleans was the greatest city in the world and only a few places could rival it in the United States.  She was well educated, attending Columbia University, and had been married to a well educated man who was an attorney and politician, a contemporary and friend of Huey Long, the infamous Governor of Louisiana. But he, the first Thomas Tomeny in my line, had left her and the Catholic church and married a Protestant woman and even become a Mason. Madge Tomeny was very bitter about that, and her hate for my father's father consumed the rest of her very long, and very alcoholic, life until she passed in 1992.  I learned nothing of my grandfather, Tom Tomeny, from her as  she removed every trace of him from her life.  The first picture of him I  have ever seen  came in an email from Family Search a few years ago. I subsequently  learned of  his Protetantism and Masonic membership by visiting his grave site in Alexandria ,  Louisiana in 2018.

My mother, who was born Janice Goldsmith, wanted to get away from both New Orleans and her mother in law. So we moved to the "wild west" of Denver, Colorado  in 1966.  At age six, I expected to be riding horses in the streets as cowboy culture was so popular on our black and white TV at the time.

I was very disappointed when we arrived in Denver as it had paved streets and cars just like New Orleans did. And the mountains were just some "triangles" off in the distance to me.  I was shocked to learn that people "lived in the  mountains", think they lived inside those distant triangles. I turned out, when we finally went there, they had paved roads and cars just like Denver, and did not live in caves inside of the mountains.

My mother was better established in Colorado, and is, to this day, a member of the Territioral Daughters of Colorado. Her Jewish family was prominent in Pueblo, where they were merchants. Her great grand parents had crossed the plains with the Mormon Battalion, a fact I only learned after joining the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints in 2017. And her maternal grandmother was born in Nauvoo, according to Family Search, I had no idea of that either prior to joining the Church. Her mother and father were Helen and Ernest Goldsmith. She grew up in Omaha, and went to school with Warren Buffet and was good friends with his future wife. The Goldsmith's moved to Glencoe, Illinois along the way, and my grandfather, an unusual for the time Jewish graduate of Harvard, had a business office in downtown Chicago, to which he rode the commuter train every work day. He was a brilliant man of some financial success and loved by all who knew him. He was not very religious at all, to our memory. He passed of a heart attack in 1969, possibly my most traumatic memory from childhood.

So I came into the world with some degree of privilege. We children were of Jewish heritage, but not Jewish. Our family was always broke, yet both of my parents and 3 out fof 4 of my grandparents graduated from college, even prestigious ones. We were taught well the values of both faith in God and learning, and to obey the commandments. Neither my two brothers, my sister, or I got into any significant behavioral trouble as kids. Yet we felt as "black sheep" as our New Orleans cousins all seemd to be vastly more successful than anyone in our family ever did.  This feeling probably motivated me to my early business success.

 My mother's maternal grandmother lived in a small cottage in the St. Vincent's Catholic parish in Denver, and we were sent to school there. At the time, it was tuition free, as it was staffed mostly then by the Sisters of Loretto without much cost, women for whom I have the greatest of admiration even today. To my understanding, the school was primarily financed by receiving the inheritances of parish members who had passed.  I am eternally grateful to those faithful as well, as we surely could not have afforded tuition as a young family in those early years as my father entered a job market where no one knew him, contrasted with New Orleans, where he had graduated from Tulane University, almost everyone knew him. 

My father was an amazing man with several terrible addictions, alcohol and smoking. He was the sort of man who made instant friends with everyone he met, and respected all he met equally, from the garbage man to the future President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, whom I met also at a campaign stop at a hanger at the Denver airport when he first ran in 1968. He was faithful to our mother and us children, yet never overcame his alcohol addiction until after my mother finally divorced him shortly after I turned 18 and she felt she had done all she could do to keep our family together. He remarried and conquered his alcoholism after moving back to New Orleans, but the smoking killed him at the early age of 56, in 1988.

I was a very religious boy growing up, and considered the Catholic priesthood as a vocation. I had a  miraculous encounter with Jesus when I was about 10 years old, in the famous Church on the Rock in Allenspark, Colorado. At the time I was a camper at what was then Camp St. Malo, which has since burned down and closed. In subsequent summers, I traveled across the plains with our priest, Father Dan Bohte, who was the campus pastor at the University of Denver. He stayed with my grandmother and I in Glencoe as he attended summer sessions at Loyola in Chicago. My interactions with him led to me losing any desire to be a Catholic priest and convinced me that there were very serious problems with the Catholic Church and its priests. I had previously had a troubling interaction with a St. Vincent's parish priest, and that is why our family had started attending the University of Denver campus services instead.

As an elementary student at St. Vincent's, I continued in my "know it all" ways and was not very popular because of it. And by seventh grade, was not as respectful to the teachers as I should have been . By that time few religious sisters still worked at the school, and the lay teachers who replaced them were very low paid. In seventh grade, the principal suggeted to my parents that life would be better for all if I took the entrance exam at Regis High School, and then could skip the 8th grade at St Vincent's.

I arrived at Regis at age 13, a year younger than all my classmates. I had been a pretty good athlete at St. Vincent's but now I was too small and physically undeveloped to continue to play football, so I took up playing tennis and made the varsity team as a sophomore. I also started playing ice hockey and ended up as a co-captain of that not very good team as a Senior. While I got a very good education at Regis, at least one of the priests was a notorious pedophile, and that was not a secret to anybody who attended in those days. Seeing this further alienated me from the Catholic church.

I graduated from Regis in December of 1976 at age 16, one semester early in order to save my parent's another semester of tuition and to be free of school of school for the spring of 1977, so I could do a lot of skiing.  That did not work out so great, as the winter of 76-77 was the worst year ever for snow at the Colorado ski areas, and this was before widespread snowmaking.

So instead of a lot of skiing that spring, I travelled to New Orleans and spent some time living with my grandmother, and met my first girlfriend, Jan Daniel.  She had attended Ursuline Academy, one of the schools that I understand had rejected my sister more than decade earlier due to our Jewish heritage. She was an amazing young woman, and went on to become the first non-religious Superintendent of the very large New Orleans Parochial School System, overseeing something like 136 schools.  She was New Orleans born and bred, and clearly had no intention of ever leaving South Louisiana, and I was only 16 so she was not a long term prospect for me or I for her.

In the fall of 1977, my parents, still together, dropped me off at Baker Hall dormitory at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I had graduated in the top 10% of my class at Regis, and had been admitted to study Architectural Engineering. My inspiration for studying architecture most likely came from watching the Brady Bunch, where the great dad was an architect, and the fact that my father was in the construction industry. My ACT score on the math section was much lower than my other very high scores, so I intentionally chose engineering to improve my math skills. I had never really so much as lifted a book in my whole life, so engineering school was shocking for me. It was the start of me being cured of being a know it all. I thought I was likely the youngest kid on campus, but it turned out a young man in the dorm room next to me was even younger, as he had skipped two grades of school growing up, and his Jewish parents were academics, and he truly was a know it all.

I stopped attending church immediately when I was on my own. If there is a Catholic church on or near the CU Boulder campus, I still have no idea where it is. I was done with the Catholic church. And I never opened my door to the "evangelist students" who roamed the dorm halls, asking people if they "were saved". Instead I had my hands full studying for the first time in my life, and trying to pay for school myself as my parents began the divorce process. I survived, but did not thrive, either academically or financially.  And I had no romantic prospects at all as I had neither time or money.

I moved off campus my second year for one semester, but ended up back in the dorms after our off campus house, with 5 of us sharing the 5 bedrooms, was deemed an illegal "commune" by the Boulder authorities. I had purchased and was driving the world's worst car then, a 1973 yellow Chevy Vega hatchback, and  I always parked facing down a hill so I could push start it as was often necessary. 

During Christmas break of my sophomore year, I got my biggest "break", by losing my construction job that was supposed to provide enough money to pay my living expenses for the spring semester. Instead there was such cold weather, that the company laid everyone off and shut the job down for that month. In despair, I went to a friend's house and they had just ordered a pizza from a new place that had just opened their first ever Colorado store, it was called Domino's.

I ended up quitting college to be the Domino's store manager at the store that served most of the University of Colorado at Boulder campus. I made huge money because my bonuses were 25% of that busy stores profits. After one year I had enough money to open my own Domino's franchise store, but is was turned down for a franchise, likely because I was not yet old enough to sign the contract, as I was only 20 years old.

I soured on Domino's after they refused my franchise, and ended up opening a competitor that I called Pizza Time in El Paso, Texas, where Domino's had transferred me so I could turn around a troubled store that served Fort Bliss, a very large Army post. Domino's had a terrible location, and I advised them that a much better one was available, but my supervisor, Joe Romano, didn't want to spend the money to relocate that store at that time. So I started building my own store in that far superior location while still working for Domino's. We opened in December of 1981 and were profitable from the very first day, as many of the employees and customers deserted Domino's with me.

From 1981 to 1988 I built my pizza stores, under several different names, and helped many others build pizza delivery stores as well. Combined, we had about 100 stores, though I only received ongoing revenue from about 15 of them. But that revenue was huge, and I lived a no limits lifestyle when it came to spending money, including a Porsche, several Mercedes, and two airplanes. But I was pretty miserable up until 1985, when I met my first wife, the mother of my two boys, Kari Bright. While neither of us was religious at the time, we had an amazing wedding at the then Episcopal Cathedral in El Paso and a large reception in the ballroom of the Hotel Paso Del Norte. The church is now St. Clements Anglican Church.

In 1991, our first child arrived, Thomas Joseph Tomeny IV, known as TJ.  We had recently moved to the Dallas area in search of new business opportunities and a supportive community in which to raise our new family.

TJ changed me like no other. Loving others properly was outside my grasp before TJ arrived. He was truly an angel from Heaven in my life. A few months after he arrived on February 15, I began to be very interested again in the things of God for the first time in many years. I began reading New Age books by people such as Wayne Dyer and soon began to study the Bible and started looking into different churches. Before TJ's first year had passed, my wife and I had joined Grace Outreach Center in Plano, TX and soon began to be lay leaders in that congregation.

On June 3, 1994, we received Patrick into our family. Another amazing child, he came with bright red hair like his mother, and a great sense of humor and love from the very beginning. 

All was very well for the next seven years, despite a business failure. We were healthy, wealthy, and blessed in every way, surely our seven years of plenty. Then we hit very hard times, as there was a major rift between me and my wife over the education of our boys. I was fired from Legacy Christian Academy,  where we were one of the founding families, and both Kari and I were on the staff. I had detected some unconscionable practices by the school's Head, and reported those to our Board. They then had to let one of us go, and chose, in retrospect by the hand of God, to let me go.

I landed a new better administrative position at a new, wonderful and innovative school, that I had the privilege of renaming and writing most all of the new course catalogs and other materials. Coram Deo Academy, "coram deo" meaning "in the presence of God" remains an innovative and thriving institution, one of the great successes of my life, far more than any fortune earned. Without the door closing for me at Legacy Christian Academy, this door would have never opened for me. This failure to success paradox is consistent in my life.

The trouble in our marriage was healed in the most difficult way, as our oldest son, TJ, was diagnosed with a brain tumor just weeks after Kari acquiesced and left Legacy to join the staff at Coram Deo, and the family was reunited at one school with great prospects for the future. We had been out shopping for a lot to build our mansion in one of the most prestigious neighborhoods around, a gated community called Tour 18, that has 18 holes of golf that emulate 18 of the most famous layouts in the game.

TJ's illness, unlike the school crisis, was serious stuff. The typical survival time for such a diagnosis at the time was about six months. We were devastated. TJ's life had been perfect. He was an amazing student, athlete, musician, friend, and disciple of Jesus Christ, even at 11 years of age when diagnosed. I learned more from TJ than anyone else in my entire life, and about all of my close relationships have been with teachers. TJ was the ultimate teacher for me, by his life lived rather than any formalities.

The great lesson that TJ taught me was to overcome the great fear that is the source of fear in all, the fear of death. For three years he looked death in the eye and never wavered. He knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there were two possible outcomes for his predicament, he was going to live and serve Jesus with his entire life, or he was going to be with Jesus sooner rather than later. 

The Earth was shaken, my world was shaken, by a tremendous storm as TJ lay dying in the first week of September, 2005. The great storm that was Hurricane Katrina hit my birthplace, and destroyed much of it. I can't help to believe that it was no coincidence, as it was a personal Armageddon for me, watching my son and my friends and my family in New Orleans in various stages of dying. On the upside, relocation caused my best friend of a cousin at the time, Oliver Delery Jr. to be living in the Dallas area, and he attended TJ's funeral a few days after TJ passed into glory on 9/9/05.

TJ's funeral was a true celebration of life, as over 1,000 people, the most in the history of the Grace Outreach Center building, attended. HIs body was later interred at the Bluebonnet Hills cemetery in Colleyville, next to three empty grave sites that are being held for Kari, Patrick, and I if needed. His grave on the edge of that cemetery is right next to batting cage that is in frequent use. TJ was an outstanding baseball player, having been named the MVP of a game as a fifth grader playing on the 8th grade team before he got sick. And his mother Kari was an outstanding college athlete, playing center field for the New Mexico State Roadrunners as she earned her way at that university.

The first few years post-TJ are mostly forgotten times for me, as I was beyond heartbroken. I began to wonder if I could truly trust God's word. The commandment to honor our father and mother, which TJ did exceptionally well, comes with a promise, that you will live long in the land. It was devastating to my testimony to feel as if this was even possibly not true.

I began to distrust the theology that I had learned. I started to think that the church we had been attending was not evil, but surely not teaching some things properly. And Kari started to hate going to church, as she was angry at God taking away our amazing son. This was particulary difficult for her, as she was still, and is still, employed at a wonderful Christian school, Legacy Christian Academy in Frisco, Texas. After TJ had been diagnosed, we had acceded to his request that he and his brother Patrick and his mother all leave Coram Deo and return to Legacy, where all his friends were. A truly good man of God who was my employer and mentor at Coram Deo made what felt to me like a horrible decision at that time to release me from my position at Coram Deo when the rest of the family went back to Legacy.

Ultimately, Rodney Marshall's decision was a huge blessing to me and my family. It kept us together through the most difficult three years of our life, as TJ's disease progressed, with many small victories along the way for those three years. For the first time in my adult life, I was not obsessed with building anything up for anybody, I was truly obsessed with making every day as happy as it could be for our family. I was, by circumstance if not by choice, seeking first the Kingdom of God, in a happy family, and we received all the promised blessings by me doing so. In many ways, these were the three best years of my life. We traveled the world and the country and God blessed us every step of the way. TJ's story was a front page story in the national edition of the Wall Street Journal. I already had a fortune, this was the closest I ever have been to any sort of fame.

During a season when TJ's illness was in apparent remission, I used a substantial portion of my fortune to buy a business that I believed I could transfrom into a national scale entity. Benchmark Dry Cleaners in Carrollton, Texas was a joint venture between a local entrepreneur and the very large Cintas Corporation. It was perhaps the first large scale operation that had no local stores, but a very large automated dry cleaning plant serving the entire DFW metro aree from a single central location with a fleet of delivery vehicles. I came close to losing my fortune as it turned out that the convenience of home delivery was not enough to overcome the decline of the industry generally since it's heyday in the 1980's, fueled then by the book and idea, dress for success.

The local entrepreneur, to my judgement, turned out to be my first and most expensive encounter with what I now know as a "saint who is actually not a saint", for his business practices were a far cry from his testimony. Like many subsequent encounters, it appears to me now that he was instead a flawed man, like me, married to a true saint, and that accounted for the many blessings that were apparent in his life. Benchmark Dry Cleaners, when I purchased it, was actually a telemarketing operation that did dry cleaning and laundry, and there was tremendous churn in their large customer base, as they consistently delivered far less than promised.

I was blessed to resurrect Benchmark with about half a year of very hard work, and an amazing young man who was already on staff there, Juan Vargas. Under his leadership, Benchmark went from churning customers to keeping customers at  probably the highest rate in the industry. For about 15 years, I made a good living out of there without doing much work at all, as Juan was and is so capable. And as the greatest bonus of all, I was privileged to see Juan and his dear wife Rose move their lives closer and closer to Jesus every step of the way, and they provided a great example to many of our loyal immigrant employees. Benchmark, when I sold it, was an absolute, and verifiable miracle. My second wife, Eden, in a marriage that would be annulled after a few months, got on our knees and prayed to sell Benchmark in early 2019. Two hours later, the phone rang with a cash offer from a nationally expanding chain, Tide Dry Cleaners.

The principal thing I did after TJ's death in 2005 was to dive deep into theology. I began visiting different churches almost every weekend, sometimes as many as three in a single weekend. It ended up being more than a decade of church and soul seeking. What I failed to tend to properly was our marriage, and finally, in 2012, Kari divorced me. Patrick was then 18 and an outstanding computer science student at Texas A & M, earning a prestigious and well paid internship with VISA International during the summer after his freshman year. Patrick had thrived after TJ's death, becoming every bit as great a young man as TJ had been. I began to understand, even then, that the same Spirit that was with TJ durring his shortened life was surely Patrick's regular companion as well. Patrick was, and is, simply an amazing young man, with a tender heart of true love for all. 

My deep dive into theology brought me to my Jewish roots. The best churches I found at the time were independent, but of one mind, the mind of the Jewish messiah, Jesus Christ. In particular, Baruch Hashem, and its founding rabbi Marty Waldman, and Eitz Chaim, and its founding rabbi David Schiller, in the Dallas area, and Or Chaim, Beth Abraham, and the Shema Messianic Community in Denver, were all great contributors to my spiritual growth. Rabbi Russ Beeson of Shema is a great example of a "saint who is not a Latter Day Saint", a truly born again follower of Jesus who has forsaken all else in seeking God's kingdom.

At the same time I was pursuing Jesus in the messianic Jewish tradition, I was blessed to have found another saint who is not a Latter Day Saint for Sunday worship, Peter Hiett of The Sanctuary in Denver. Peter, with his wife Susan, is so far beyond amazing that the just the thought of him brings joyful tears to my eyes. Peter has truly laid down his life for Jesus, as he was cast out of a mainstream denomination for standing firm for the character of God, that He loves all, all the time. At a time when his kids were faced with expensive college educations, and he was at the height of "preacher success", he allowed all that he had built to be taken away from him, as he defended Jesus Christ in an actual church court proceeding, refusing to acknowledge the falsities of the Westminster Confession.

Peter Hiett is my personal Joseph Smith. While, like me, with many flaws, he is intent upon bringing to the world the revelations that have come to him. So much of what he preaches and teaches from his now tiny church is identical to Latter Day Saint doctrine that all can know it is of divine inspiration. And he, through the internet, is reaching a worldwide audience. My first ever talk given in church was at Peter's church, that video is here. It was my prayer for Peter Hiett that lead me to being truly born again...

My Born Again Life

In the one minute after hitting Send on that email, to my then Pastor and good friend, Peter Hiett, the room got very dark and scary. I left my bedroom and went to the kitchen, and that is where, one minute later, the light and fire of God entered both the room and me.

I believe this is the critical step in life that we must all go through to be utterly transformed from being a disciple of Jesus to being truly born again of God. When we commit by profession of faith and water baptism, we are disciples. When God seals His Spirit in us, we are saints. We have started a whole new life and must learn life all over again. Even the great Apostle Paul had to learn again. Scripture tells us that he was in Egypt learning by the Spirit for three years after his baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost that happened on the road to Damascus.

A few months later, after having struggled to comprehend what had happend to me, I was visited one morning by the voice of God in me. He said, "Trey, you have been to over 100 different churches in the last ten years, now it is time to join my church." I replied, "Which church is that?" And He replied, "The one with my name on it". I had to think a bit, but finally replied, "Could it be the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints?", He replied, "Yes, that's it."

I then went to my computer and ended up at a website then called mormon.org.  A few hours later I was having breakfast with two young Elders in a nearby IHOP, telling this story and explaining that I must be baptized into their church. After some resistance, I was baptized into the Church on July 8, 2017 in the "Coors building" along Highway 6 on the west side of the Denver area. That day was not then the end of my journey, but only the beginning.

From Trey to Treyeshua to Tom

I had another distinct encounter with our Savior in early May of 2017, very close to the time when I was called to join the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints. In this encounter, He gave me a new name.  I had always, from childhood, gone by the name Trey, which is a nickname stemming from my legal name being Thomas Joseph Tomeny III, with Trey being the Latin word for third, according to my father. I had been attending numerous Messianic congregations in 2017, and they all refer to Jesus as Yeshua.  In my encounter with Jesus, He gave me the name Treyeshua, and told me it was because I live in Him and He lives in me, as per John 14:20, which also explained to me what "the day of the Lord" truly is, it is that day when you truly receive the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost, and you can then know and understand all scripure as you turn to Him in prayer and have the mind of Christ.

On May 7, 2017, I registered a  new Gmail account, treyeshua@gmail.com. And sometime thereafter began using Treyeshua Tomeny as my Facebook name and often introducing myself as Treyeshua. So, before having any awareness of the idea of "taking on the name of Christ" as is taught in the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints, I had already, by His Spirit, taken on His name.

I also, by the Spirit in the previous months, had been taught many essential LDS doctrines. I had stopped by a longtime former church, Grace Outreach Center in Plano, Texas and found an old friend sitting in her car in the parking lot. Her name is Joni Broker and she is an outstanding Children's Church teacher there and has been for decades. I told her of my baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost and apparently scared her by what I said, so a few days later I received an ugly phone call from Garrett Hawfitch, one of the Assistant Pastors there. I replied to that phone call with a very lengthly letter that I recently reread for the first time. It is remarkable to me because that letter contains so many essential LDS doctrines that I had not yet been exposed to yet.

My "prophesy" in that letter was at least partially correct, as Grace Outreach Center no longer exists.  While I have not followed them closely, in the last few years they have rebranded themselves as Grace Church, and Garrett Hawfitch and Joni Broker are still employed there per their website. I dearly love Garrett, Joni, and all the people of Grace, and know the day will come when all will come into the fullness of the Gospel. I will eventually be sending a lot of the people there links to this website as I said I would one day do in that letter.

I used the name Trey exclusively for my whole life before beginning to use Treyeshua. In 2022, I began using my correct shortened legal name, Tom Tomeny, because it is alliterative and my understanding was that a legal name was needed as I ran for Utah County Commissioner in 2022.  That campaign website is still up and readable at nomoneypolitics. com. In the video posted below, I reference my full name, including my mother's maiden name, Thomas Joseph Gold Smith Tomeny III, for it, remarkably, includes the name of the Prophet of the Restoration, Joseph Smith, which is also his father's name, and my baptism date was changed at the last moment to Joseph Smith Sr.'s birthday, July 8.

My Trials and Life in Zion/Utah

At the time the above video was recorded, I was facing up to 7 felony charges and two Class A Misdemeanors that could have put me in prison for a very long time. These were literally my trials in Zion. This section will tell the amazing story of those completely false charges and how Jesus led me out of them. I am still working on this part. I do plan to name names so all can be accountable to both God and man for their actions. These experiences are working for the good of all, for if a wealthy white man like myself can be put through such hell, then it is a bit terrifying to think of what it is like for the poor, black, and brown, and especially for single mothers, who often face false accusations routinely.

My First Latter Day Saint Marriage

I married Eden Hirschy on December 12, 2018 in a civil ceremony at my house in Idaho Springs Colorado. That marriage was annulled a few months later after Eden left our home in the middle of the night, never to return. I am trying to contact Eden to get her consent to reveal some of those details. She is a very faithful Latter Day Saint and was likely acting upon the prompting of God to leave me as my mission with and for her good had then ended. At the time we met, she had left the Church, and the immediate prospect of marriage to me had her immediately return to the Church.  The last time we spoke, in 2023, she was thriving in her career and was part of her Ward Relief Society Presidency. She and her parents and siblings all appear to me to be valiant followers of Jesus.

Possibly to be continued...

My Eternal Companion

Like my annulled marriage to Eden, my marriage to Karmel was part of God's purpose in eventually doing good for me. I hope and pray that our marriage will also end up working for good in Karmel's life as she surely truly loves God and works for His purposes.

When I moved from Colorado to Utah in August of 2019, I began attending the Million Cups event each Wednesday morning, then held in the offices of Revroad in Provo. At one of those events, I believe it was September 11, I met Karmel Pehrson, who became my eternal companion three months later, on December 13, 2019, in the Salt Lake Temple. This was the date that had been reserved earlier for my planned sealing to Eden. Since Eden had been baptized into another church, we were not eligible for Temple sealing at that time until one year after our civil marriage.

As evidence of how good our marriage was while it lasted, here are samples of Karmel's early correspondence to me and to others about me:

On October 3, 2019, she wrote this to me, "I love you! Thank you for following spirit and coming into my life when and how you did. I promise to strive always to be the ultimate gift that God has prepared me to be for you. He desires to give me to you for your love and service on his behalf. He thanks you for your sacrifices and willingness to lay down your life time and time again. Take it up again. Take me with you and let us serve God and one another faithfully forever."

On November 12, 2019 she wrote the following to Eden, "He is by far the most honest, kind, loving man I've ever met".

Less than 24 hours prior to leaving me, on August 31, 2020, Karmel drew this on our bedroom dresser mirror:

It reads, "I am the luckiest woman of all time and most blest"

Karmel and I had a wonderful marriage for just over 8 months. Then she suddenly turned against me, apparently trying to destroy my life, and, to my perspective, surely destroying her own life.

Karmel has a publicly admitted lifelong history of mental illness.  When we met, she was a volunteer with the IM Foundation, and on their now disappeared website had a posting detailing her history of mental illness, including at least one suicide attempt. I have a copy of that posting. I was perhaps foolish to marry her, but I believed then, and still do now, that love conquers all, and that her mental illness would be manageable within our marriage. I had previous personal experience with subjectively diagnosed mental illness at the time.

But our marriage ended quite unexpectedly after she suddenly and radically turned against me, even making objectively false allegations of abuse. She first called the police alleging abuse, but they properly did nothing. She then filed for a domestic violence order against me and that was turned down by the court. The tide turned for her allegations when she contracted with a corrupt attorney, Laura Cabanilla, to represent her. Laura Cabanilla is so corrupt that I will write an entire page detailing her corruption soon. And she can sue me if she wants, as I have all the evidence of her corruption, in writing. Our marriage was likely salvageable if Laura Cabanilla had not gotten involved. Perhaps one day Karmel will realize this and take appropriate legal action against her.

After retaining Cabanilla, Karmel submitted substantially the same alleged facts, with enhancements, to the court requesting a Stalking Injunction against me and it was granted on a temporary basis pending a hearing. That Temporary Stalking Injunction was never ever served on me and I was never therefore subject to it. As Karmel's convenant companion, I continued, for many months, to try to get her the mental health treatment I believed she so desperately needed. Those contacts with her, when I was not subject to the any injunction, landed me in a legal mess that was made worse by my hiring of incompetent attorneys, the principal one being Chris Dexter. Like Cabanilla, I plan a page to show all how incompetent Chris Dexter was in this particular case. 

In retrospect, these matters were all by the hand of God, giving me the mission to expose the corruption and self seeking nature of so many people embedded in the Utah lack of justice system. Karmel and I and you are all its innocent victims.

To be continued...

My Amazing Wife and Marriage

I am now very happily married to Ellice Taylor. She is an amazing Latter Day Saint and true saint of God. Her story is better than my story, as she made an amazing sacrifice, choosing to give birth to an amazing child of God who lived with severe handicaps his whole 25 years of life, after being counseled to terminate that pregancy by all medical professionals. 

Possibly to be continued... 

The Latest False Accusation

As I write this on March 17, 2024, I am facing yet another false accusation in a court of law. I was convicted of an infraction called disorderly conduct by the Justice Court in Orem, Utah, based on the false testimony of several witnesses. I have appealed that conviction to the District Court and filed a complaint with the Office of Professional Conduct against the particular Orem City Attorney, Alliisa Leon, who withheld the evidence from me that could have shown that the principal witness was lying.  A new trial will be held in the District Court if the charge is not dropped.

By now, I understand completely that living a life wholly dedicated to God results in numerous false accusations. Somehow, in the spirit world that surrounds us, the forces of evil know who threatens their very existence, and they possess the people they inhabit to break the Commandment and bear false witness. False witness, or plain old lying, is the most common manifestation of evil in the world. We all learn to do it and many never repent from doing it.

In this particular case, my stepdaughter, HT, was on her second day of operating a food trailer that I built and leased to her, called Beweto. We had a very promising location on the corner of State Street and University Parkway in Orem, in the parking lot of the Big 5 store. It was July 11, 2023 and the trailer had been operating there since May. We had stopped operating near the end of June in order to make some changes in our operation, and another trailer, Los Catrachos, had begun parking in our same spot, but only for lunch and dinner. Beweto's slogan is Breakfast Full of Love.

On this day, when we showed up to operate in our usual spot, where our car hop service signs had been custom made to fit between the concrete tree wells, Leo, the owner of Los Catrachos, had shown up prior to 5:45 or so in the morning for the express purpose of blocking our operation. He had done the same thing the day before when he showed up and set up for his lunch service in the late morning. On that day, despite plenty of room, also right on University Parkway, just east of us, he painstakingly maneuvered his truck and trailer to park directy in front of us an block our operation, and refused to move when I confronted him then about that choice.

I got upset when I saw him there so early in the morning, without his crew in the truck, so clearly there solely to block our operation. At first he refused to even turn his head and look at me as I yelled loud enough to be heard through his closed window with his engine running. When he finally did open his window and talked to me, the conversation was completely civil, he told me his name was Leo, and he agreed to move and we shook hands. 

When I walked over to our trailer, H and her teenage daughter were irate. They felt I had wronged Leo because I had yelled in order to get him to respond.  I had actually yelled because he was in his truck with the engine running and the window rolled up, and I had to yell to get him to speak with me. They were already mad from the day before, their first day ever operating any food business, because I had tried to teach them how to do it, and they had the idea that I was going to let them learn by trial and error from the beginning rather than showing them how to operate from the beginning. H is an amazing and loving person, but has a lifelong history of being rebellious against authority. It was surely my mistake to have selected her to operate the trailer without fully understanding her.

Leo decided to break his agreement with me, and instead of moving his trailer as promised he called the police, and he called his friend Gabriel, who arrived just before the police did. I began recording audio on my phone when Gabriel showed up since that seemed suspicious and Leo's trailer showed no signs of moving. Instead of Leo, the actual caller and witness, talking to the police, Gabriel did almost all of the talking when they showed up. The police concluded, correctly, that no crime had been committed, and that it was a civil matter that would have to be worked out with Big 5, since they own the parking lot. Gabriel and I were advised by Officer Hugh to be civil with one another, and that should have been the end of it, as we agreed to speak with Big 5 later in the day. The record of the 911 calls shows that Leo had lied on that, as he alleged that there had been "fighting" and that I might have a gun. I urged the police to arrest him for the false report but they chose not to do so.

When the police left, H and her daughter continued to be very upset at me. Her daughter threatened to quit, and I immediately accepted that and told her, loudly, to leave. Then H yelled at me for a few moments. This is when Gabriel called the police as second time, alleging that I was "fighting" with two women, yet another completely false allegation. It was a slightly heated family discussion over who had the authority over the exact trailer location. To me, Gabriel imagined that he and Leo could take advantage of this situation in order to get me charged with a crime and unable to contest them for what they for some reason viewed as a better trailer location.

I have to guess that Gabriel lied to the police when they came the second time, as the bodycam video of him talking to the police is non-existent. I ended up being charged with a Class C Misdemeanor, Disorderly conduct after being told by the police to stop. That charge is and was completely false, and I have the audio recording that proves that. During the 18 or so minutes between being advised by Officer Hugh to be civil with Gabriel, the audio records that we were civil with one another, without any of the "unreasonable noises" or other behaviors that are required to constitute the offense of disorderly conduct. I offered to share the audio with Officer Wong, but he refused to listen to it since he had already decided to charge me, before every talking personally to me. 

Then one of the officers called Big 5's emergency contact number and apparently falsely reported that there had been a fight in the parking lot between operators of food trailers. Their regional manager immediately and permanently banned all food operators from their parking lot, including several not involved at all who had been there for many years. This is, to me, why bearing false witness is one of the Ten Commandments, after the lies start, the damaged are not just the liars, but innocent people all aroung them.

Heather and her daughter went on to a new location and started having success there, but ended up quitting the operation. The Beweto trailer is close to be relaunched by a new operator in a new location. Los Catrachos went through several locations but now appears to operate, for lunch and dinner, in the hard to see side parking lot of Miracle Bowl on State Street. They break Orem City Code every day as they operate there, as the code specifies that food trailers may only be in one location for five hours at a time.

The case was first assigned to City Attorney Jon Ditto. He offered me a "deal" of pleading guilty to an infraction of disorderly conduct and a $100 fine. I explained to him that I was not guilty of anything, that I was the victim of false testimony, and I shared my audio recording with him. I also contacted Jeff Lambson, an Orem City Councilman, who sympathized with my plight, but apparently did nothing. During my first appearance in court on the matter before Judge Parkin of the Justice Court, something strange happened, as Judge Parking suggested to Jon Ditto that the Class C misdemeanor be reduced to an Infraction, and Ditto agreed. I felt, "the fix was in" as for a Class C misdemeanor, I was entitled to a jury trial, and the evidence would be limited to what happened after the first police call, when Gabriel and I were advised to be civil with one another, and the audio record is clear that we were.

For reasons unknown to me, Jon Ditto was then removed from the case and it was assigned to Aliisa Leon. Ms. Leon refused to give me the police bodycam footage as is required by law so I could review it for my defense. She said it is against their policy to release such video to defendants who defend themselves, but that they do release it to the lawyers representing defendants, clearly to me a grossly unfair practice. The lawyer I approached about defending me wanted $6,000 to take this case. Instead she allowed me to come into her office and view it with two police officers present in the room for several hours, costing the City of Orem a small fortune in her time and their time. Since I did not know then what lies Leo would tell when called as a witness, I was not prepared to refute his lies when we were at trial before Judge Parkin on February 8, 2024. When I get access to the videos again before the new trial I am fairly certain that what is captured in the background will be proof that Leo committed perjury in court that day.

The trial on February 8, 2024 took over 3 hours. All five police officers were present the entire time, plus four court employees, and Ms. Leon, and three members of my family, and Leo and Gabriel and a Spanish/English interpreter. The cost of this trial to the taxpayers of Orem was staggering. All to put me, the victim of the false police reports, on trial.  If Ms. Leon had any common sense, she would have dismissed these charges before trial. But she apparently desired victory over justice, and knew from past experience she had a reliable ally in Judge Parkin.

Judge Parkin, is, to me, unqualified for his postion. He is not a trained lawyer but has presided now in the Orem Justice Court for 19 years. He appears to be expert in procedure, but ignorant of actual law. Since all of his decisions may be appealed for a new trial in District Court, it appears to me that Justice Court is intended to be a "court of common sense" but Judge Parkin does not seem, to me, to understand that. He ruled that the false police reports by Leo and Gabriel were not "matters before the court" and eventually found me guilty, and during sentencing asserted that disorderly conduct is a "catch all" offense for which there is no defense. This is why Judge Parkin is, to me, unqualified to be a judge. No law can be a  "catch all" for if that  is true the law no longer exists, all is subjective to the whims of  public officials.

Judge Parkin also appears to me to have gone beyond the law in sentencing me. By the law, an infraction is only punishable by a fine, Judge Parkin also sentenced me to probation and expensive anger management classes. The fine was about double the recommended fine for the infraction.

I was my own worst enemy that day in court. While I knew that Leo and Gabriel had lied to the police when they called and described "fighting" on the morning of the incident, I didn't expect that so many more lies would be spoken in court under oath. I got visibly angry about that and that may be why Judge Parkin ordered the anger management class. But my anger was righteous, as it was sad to see such sin, those who lie do reap the consequences, eventually, and I was an am truly saddened to see any child of God, even those who falsely accuse me, bring that upon themselves.

I appealed this case to the District Court and the new trial is set for August 14, 2024. I have an official copy of the audio from the first trial. If the witnesses change their stories, I hope to introduce segments of that as clear evidence that their testimonies are not credible. A sort of miracle occurred when I appeared at the District Court on March 22, 2024 to set this trial date. Among hundreds of Utah County attorneys that appear before that court, two of the most important in my earlier cases happened to be there for that session. Craig Johnson, who did a good job on those cases, and Brixton Hakes, who was employed by Chris Dexter, and completely botched the one hearing that would have resolved all criminal matters against me at that time, as he failed to show the judge the papers I had been handed by the police that were clearly not a temporary stalking injunction. I like Brixton, and wish him well, but he, perhaps by God's intention, really failed to represent me properly on that day.

To be continued...

I have entered politics somewhat reluctantly after a series of trials and tribulatons convinced me that our governments can and will one day reflect God and His character rather than the evil that has dominated the planet.

This site contains the basic information of my background and, more importantly, it is a record of the trials and tribulations that have occurred since I converted to the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints after being truly born again by the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost in 2017.

It is through these trials and tribulations that I am sure I have been called by God to testify of how He works in me, you, and our world. And how we can hasten bringing Heaven to earth for all, so that we may soon welcome our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ to visibly sit on His throne as our King.

How God Works in Me, You, and our World?

This section is speculative theology, based on my understanding of scripture and personal experience. It is not to my knowledge the exact doctrine of any church anywhere.

As I now write the story of My Eternal Companion, too many highly unlikely things happened all along the way for there not to be a spiritual connection between all the choices made by all the participants. It was a long series of unlikely events, each chosen by individuals who appear to be pretty good people. 

My theory is that there truly are spirits in the air and that they influence us and our decisions based upon the desires of our hearts. It is God's way of giving each of us what we want to exercise our free agency. 

The desire of my heart is to help all people learn what I have learned, and beyond, about God and how to advance in our knowledge of Him and His character so we can be more like Him. So while the ordeal of losing my eternal companion, for at least a time, was horrible, I can and do know that it works for my eternal good, as I am surely reaching more people with more Truth than I would have otherwise. I went through an extreme trial, and am better for it.

As we begin to follow God ever more closely, more of these trials are likely to appear. That, to my understanding, is because the spirits in the air are real and see us coming, even unto Christ. The war in the heavens, which is the atmosphere, is ongoing, and the spirits all around us are constantly contending for our souls as they affect each of our inner dialogues. A popular depiction of this was the cartoon Fred Flintstone, who was often shown with a devil of one shoulder and an angel on another as he made choices.

The covenant path is strewn with living obstacles, ever more powerful spirits that obstruct our way as we ascend towards being more as God. And this is true for every single human, and it is in contending with these evil spirits that contention and strife are introduced into the world.

So our constant internal struggle between good and evil manifests as very real good and evil in the external world all around us. Some of us are living in the ongoing and constant presence of the Holy Spirit, while many have competing spirits, and some are sadly consumed by evil spirits.

This conception of spirits surrounding all of us is not at all anti-science, in fact science supports this theory. There are already many well known physical forces that are invisible to us, like radio waves and other electromagnetic forces. The air we share with each other is both invisible and ubiquitous, this is the air that is made of spirits. Our bodies, and particularly our nervous systems, are not the permanent containers of our memories, our memories are encoded, most likely in oxygen atoms, in the air we breathe. This is why we remember somethings at some times and others at other times. And it is why we can get past our fear of  bodily death, as we continually exhale atoms that contain our memories for later recall, even in a new body.

The best current evidence that this is true comes from recent discoveries in neuroscience, where people have lost large portions of their brains yet eventually have all their memories return, strong evidence that memories are stored outside of our bodies.

We are literally inhabited by many spirits at all times. Our decision making is influenced by these spirits. Those who consistently choose evil end up on a spiral of more and more evil, while those who choose good end up on the spiral that is the covenant path, becoming more and more as God.

Somehow, the great force that is God, and I think may be the cumulative spirits of our ancestors, choose where to be and when so we are ultimately "steered" by the spirits, the sort of spirits we continually choose to abide in us. Those "holy" among us, have consistently chosen the right for long times in their lives, such that they rarely if ever make any evil choices. 

Those inhabited by more evil spirits somehow sense the presence of the holy ones, and react in a way that pushes the people that they are trying to control towards more evil choices, which usually involves false witness towards the holy ones.

It is important to always and everywhere remember that our war is not against other people, other children of God, but a spiritual war against the spirits that inhabit them. It is likely that those spirits got there as those good people reacted to the wrongs they suffered by choosing more evil. We must each break this cycle of evil choices in us, and then help all those around us to break free as well.

When we are free of the influence of evil spirits, we each experience the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost, and have the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost in us. The spiritual war in us is then over, and our deepest desire is to help others leave that spiritual war behind as well. For this is the simple will of God, that all of his children grow up to be as Him, which means putting on Christ, and putting the spiritual war in our past. When we have done so, we are truly residents of the Kingdom of God, and looking forward to the day when all are truly in Christ, as that will be Heaven. Physically, according to Genesis 1:7-8. we already live on the firmament, and all above that, even by a fraction of a millimeter, is in heaven. Spiritual growth in each of us is about learning to be as God so we all eventually live in that same Heaven, in peace and harmony with all of God's children.