SALT LAKE CITY — In a stark and personal new video clip released online Thursday night, Elizabeth Smart explains how faith lessons taught by her mother helped her survive when she was kidnapped in 2002 at age 14.
"I realized that I still had value," she said, "that this was something that nobody could ever take away from me, and it was that faith and that knowledge in God that he would always love me that helped me survive the next nine months. And it continues to help me survive to this day."
The clip begins with tight, black-and-white shots of Smart's face as she talks about what the kidnapper said when he woke her up in her bed. It ends with colorful video of her riding a horse in the mountains.
Smart made the 107-second short, available on YouTube, for a new interfaith group called Faith Counts. Faith Counts is a nonprofit, nondenominational partnership that includes The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Hillel International, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Franciscan University of Steubenville and the 1st Amendment Partnership.
“Faith has been an integral part of my life,” Smart in an LDS Church news release. “It has sustained and comforted me during trying times, given me courage to overcome adversity and has helped to heal my mind, body and spirit. I hope that by sharing my story as part of Faith Counts that it might inspire others to have greater faith, especially in times of trial and uncertainty.”
Smart, who works with survivors around the world, said faith has provided peace to her and many others.
The video ends with a tagline: "Faith heals, Faith inspires, Faith empowers, Faith Counts."
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