Mary Mackert thought it was normal at the age of 17 to become the sixth wife of a man who was 50. She was the seventh generation to enter into a polygamist marriage and firmly believed she would be destined for perdition if she did not uphold the religious tenets of her faith.
Four decades later, Ms. Mackert has another standard of normal.
She is now a Baptist missionary to young girls and polygamist wives in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ministering to followers of the prominent Canadian FLDS leader Winston Blackmore who may wish for a different way of life.
Ms. Mackert, 56, lives in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, which some say is a transit station on an underground railway line that allegedly shuffles young women between polygamist communities on either side of the Canada-U.S. border.
Ms. Mackert says she has gone for religious services to the FLDS community in the Creston, B.C., area known as Bountiful, about 50 kilometres north.
"I just sit and smile. I'm not there to cause trouble," she said of her trips to Bountiful. She goes to let women see what they can have if they want to leave the religion, she says, "and if they want [to leave], I help them get it."
Ms. Mackert's work as a missionary attracted attention in the wake of a raid last month of the FLDS Yearning For Zion compound in Texas.
Authorities apprehended 653 boys and girls under the age of 18 - including a 17-year-old Canadian girl from Bountiful - after allegedly finding evidence of sexual abuse and "a pervasive pattern" of grooming young girls for underage sex with older men. A lawyer for the religious sect has vehemently disputed the allegations.
Ms. Mackert went last month to the FLDS compound in the rocky dry lands of west Texas, about 600 kilometres west of Dallas, in an attempt to contact her stepdaughters, sister-wives, sisters and a niece she believed were there.
She returned to Bonners Ferry without having made contact with any of the women. She had heard her relatives were not happy with remarks she made in support of the raid during a televised interview. "To get in to see them after they heard my statements, only God could make that happen," Ms. Mackert said in an interview yesterday.
However, she intends to go back to Texas late this month. The fate of those who were apprehended will be decided over the coming weeks. Ms. Mackert offered to care for her relatives' children, if they are not returned to their FLDS polygamist families.
The FLDS members in Canada live the same way as do FLDS people in Colorado City, Ariz., the city where she was born, Ms. Mackert said. "They travel back and forth, and intermarry," she added. "There's religious pressure on these people [to accept a marriage with members across the border], but they do not look on it as trafficking."
Growing up in a polygamist religious sect, Ms. Mackert accepted many activities as normal that she now rejects. Her FLDS father had 27 children from three wives and additional stepchildren from a fourth wife. They lived for several years in three different homes as part of the FLDS community in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Her father wore different hats when he went into the different houses in an attempt to fool nosy neighbours, she said. He always wore glasses to enter one house but not when going to another. "That was normal to me. It was the world I was raised in. I never questioned it," she said.
Ms. Mackert said she was taught to lie to those outside the faith. "We rehearsed the story. When we were asked what [her father] did, we were to say he was a travelling salesman. If we were asked why we were not at church ...we were to say our mom was Mormon and our dad was Catholic, so we did not go to either church."
The lies brought her closer to those who shared her faith in their confrontations against a common enemy. Lying, she said, "binds you together, makes you loyal when everyone else is the enemy."
The secrecy helped the religion's leadership control its members, Ms. Mackert said. "There is so little contact with the outside world. There is no barometer, no way to compare what you do to something else."
Her husband had 35 children from seven wives. She left the marriage after 16 years, taking her five children with her. But she could not completely escape her upbringing. When she went to college for a four-year business management degree, she did not raise her hand even once to ask a question. "I was taught not to question anyone in a position of authority," Ms. Mackert said.
She joined the Baptist church in 1989 and was commissioned as a missionary to the FLDS in 2002. She moved in 2004 to Bonners Ferry, which has five FLDS families.
Ms. Mackert said she does not know whether she is achieving anything in Bonners Ferry. "You never know who in their heart of hearts wants to leave until they take action," she said. "I'm just there, making friends and hoping to influence."