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SALT LAKE CITY — In a recent video, Elizabeth Smart speaks out about her faith in God and how it helped her survive the nine months she was held captive.
“I grew up in a family that instilled a very strong sense of faith in me,” Smart said in the video. “During the next nine months of my kidnapping, I had no idea just how much I would have to rely upon that faith.”
Smart recounts in the video her feelings after the first time she was raped, comparing them to a vase that had been shattered beyond repair.
“I remember (my mom) telling me that she would always love me, and then I remember her telling me that God would always love me,” Smart said. “It was in that moment that I realized that I still had value, that this was something that nobody could take away from me.”
Smart was kidnapped from her home in Salt Lake City on June 5, 2002, and rescued March 12, 2003. During that time, she was raped, starved and chained up on a daily basis.
Faith Counts, a nonprofit organization that promotes faith by telling inspiring stories of people living around the country, produced the video. A nondenominational organization, Faith Counts works with many religious communities, according to a press release.
“We have many partners, from Catholics and Mormons and Seventh-day Adventists and Sikhs and Jewish people, and we’ve all come together because we all believe different things theologically and doctrinally, but we all agree on the power of faith,” Kerry Troup, spokeswoman for Faith Counts, said in the press release.
Brigham Young University students collaborated with Faith Counts by helping produce content and video.
“I’m amazed at the ideas they come up with to share in this world where a lot of people don’t know if they’re supposed to share what they believe,” Jeff Sheets, director of the Laycock Center for Creative Collaboration in the Arts, said in a statement.
