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Elizabeth Smart: 'We All Have Our Trials'
from AOL News
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Elizabeth Smart: 'We All Have Our Trials'
from AOL News
(Oct. 28) -- Elizabeth Smart suffered a horrific ordeal as a teenage kidnapping victim, but she told an audience she has not let the nightmarish experience prevent her from living her life as she wants to. "I just have never let it hold me back,"
Smart, now 21, said Tuesday at The Women's Conference in Long Beach, Calif. "And I have gone on to do everything so far that I have wanted to do."
The seminar, called "Overcoming the Unimaginable," marked the first time Smart has spoken publicly since testifying against her alleged kidnapper at a hearing earlier this month, NBC News said.
We all have our trials and we all experience hard times, but I don't think that we should ever let it disable us from doing what we want to do," Smart said.
"I know that we do have angels on the other side of ... what we don't see. We are never truly left alone in our darkest hour," she added.
Smart was 14 years old when she was kidnapped at knifepoint from her family's Salt Lake City home in June 2002. She was found nine months later in the company of Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee.
Smart took the stand Oct. 1 at a hearing to determine whether Mitchell is competent to stand trial. She testified that he raped her three to four times a day during her captivity and that he threatened to kill her. She called Mitchell "evil, wicked, manipulative, sneaky, slimy, selfish, greedy, not spiritual, not religious, not close to God."
Smart told the seminar audience, "I'm doing great," according to
Radar Online.
"I'm heading to Paris. I will be serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," she said. Young Mormons often spend between 18 months and two years in their late teens or 20s serving as missionaries.
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