Kelsey, 23 -Raised In The Wilderness

When I meet Kelsey, she’s is serving a mission for “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” The church that later became her salvation. Her personality and her outgoing spirit paint a picture of a unique soul. A soul that has a unique story.

“I was born in Montana. I was born in a cabin with no electricity. I have seventeen siblings.”

For some people, having a lot of siblings or children could be challenging but, Kelsey remembers her childhood as extraordinary and fun.

“It was really fun. We were all homeschooled and we lived out the land. We went out every couple months to like go get the necessities in town. We’d get like, flour and like toilet paper and some stuff like that we needed.”

“I hated going out in public because everybody stared at us cause there was like a trail of people, children, dressed in overalls. And everybody just stared and pointed, and I didn’t know how to talk to people because I was homeschooled so that was really awkward.”

The family had their own way of communicating with each other.

“We spoke to each other but it was more justs like, broken English. It was very like wilderness children speaking to each other.”

“My dad, when I asked him, he said, he didn’t like people and wanted to protect his children from the world. So he moved to the state of […] and decided to go even more extreme and moved all the way out into the middle of nowhere.”

“My mother birth like 4-5 children in a TeePee and they decided that it was getting a little crowded so they build a cabin and my mother birth more children. All natural.”

Kelsey might not have had human friends growing up, however, she did have a friend, a pet deer, named Felina, that soon would bring Kelsey several moments of adventure and joy.

“I raised her since she was little and she slept in my bed and she was my best friend. So I really got attached to her and that was really fun. Me and my sister would always go out picking berries and stuff and building huts. Your imagination was just like, endless.”

“There was one time I almost got eaten by a mountain lion.”

“I absolutely loved my childhood because we had so much fun. We were like Mowgli.”

“But the hardest thing was transitioning from being a wild child to like high school. I really wanted to go to high school cause I wanted an education. We didn’t get hardly any education at all. I could barely read, probably like a fourth-grade level. And I wanted to be normal. So begged my parents if I could go to High School.”

Kelsey describes the excitement to start high school like a fairytale. It was something she always wanted to do and was a dream of hers for many years. However, that dream turned out to be a nightmare.

“I got to High School and everybody was pushing and shoving and they spat everywhere and it was so gross. There were speaking English but I couldn’t understand what they were saying because I was very pure. So it was really really hard for me. I only went for like a week and then I dropped out.”

She waited a year to build up her confident, and later went back to school, thinking that it would be different this time.

“People were very rude. The girls all just hated me I don’t know why. I couldn’t talk to people so people just thought I was stuck up. I got called pretty much every bad name there is and I got into a lot of fights.”

“There was one day I got to school.. I was like the most innocent person. I hadn’t even kissed a boy, but everyone at school called me […] bad names, wrote on my locker. I was very very shy so I think people just took it wrong. So high school was a very dark time. Ate my food in the bathroom a lot.”

“I became kind of mean, so I just started beating people up whenever I got into a fight. I spent a lot of time in the principle’s office like more than in classrooms.”

“But then things changed. I learned to read, I was good at school, I started to learn how to talk to people and it got better. I dated this guy who was like the most popular guy in school so when I started dated him I became like popular.”

After years of up and downs, Kelsey decided to move to Utah to focus on herself.

“I took missionary discussions [for the LDS church] and then light was brought back to my life. I completely changed and I became so happy. I broke up with the guy cause he was alcoholic and all of that completely changed my life.”

“There was a time when nothing made me happy not even my family, nothing could make me happy. But when I learned more about Jesus Christ, and how he has gone through everything and how he is always there for you, and how you can be healed, has made me happy.”

“The gospel of Jesus Christ bring me the most happiness.”

How many kids do you want?

“I think I want six.. Definitely not 17.”