Famous ‘pray and obey’ sign at Warren Jeffs’ former Utah house has been removed

They chiseled out the brick letters one by one until the phrase that had long stood over their town and represented the old ways of their disgraced prophet was no more.

Every part of the infamous “pray and obey” sign in Hildale was pried away last week by a team of residents, starting with the last “Y” at the bottom of the chimney. It took them two and a half days of hammering at the past to remove it. It felt monumental in so many ways.

“Most of the people here don’t really want quotes from Warren Jeffs still hanging up,” Briell Decker told The Salt Lake Tribune. “This brings a whole lot of closure.”

Decker was the 65th wife of Jeffs, who in 2002 took over ruling the followers of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a radical offshoot of the mainstream LDS faith that found refuge to continuing practicing polygamy in the secluded desert community.

In the twin towns of Hildale in Utah and Arizona City in Arizona — collectively known as Short Creek — Jeffs took command of the sect with an iron will. Decker said the “pray and obey” message was a catchphrase of his and captured how he valued unquestioned loyalty to his edicts, including marrying young girls to adult men.

As a reminder to the faithful to be allegiant to him, Jeffs had the words cemented vertically into the side of what was called the “Big House” where he once lived. It gained such notoriety that a Netflix documentary about the control Jeffs had over members used the phrase as part of its title (along with the “keep sweet” motto of his father, Rulon Jeffs). The rust-colored letters towered above most houses in Hildale.

It has become so ingrained as an image of this place and its people tucked under the redrock cliffs.

But Decker says the town has largely moved away from that painful history and is looking forward.

Jeffs was arrested in 2006 and later sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting girls he had married. And many in Short Creek — including Decker — have distanced themselves from the fundamentalist faith and are no longer members of the church. (Others who still remain adherents left.)

It’s much more secular now. The high school there has a football team, and there’s a brewery down the street. The mayor, Donia Jessop, is the first non-FLDS member to lead the town.

“The whole place has shifted so much,” Decker said. “We needed to move forward without that sign. It’s not something we want to highlight anymore.”

The “Zion” signs that faithful members used to hang above their front doors have similarly started to disappear.

The house with the “pray and obey” sign became the Short Creek Dream Center in 2017, operating as a residential support center with counseling, drug rehabilitation and other services for families in the area. Decker was awarded ownership on Thanksgiving six years ago, and split the cost with a team that now operates the center — where Decker continues to work as a residential aide.

She sees that work as a way to heal from the oppression the house once symbolized for her. She watched last week as volunteers pounded out the three words, 11 letters, one of the last big remnants of Jeffs.

Decker was 18 years old when she was forced into an arranged marriage with Jeffs and had lived in the house for about four months before he was arrested. The house is one of more than 100 that were redistributed to former sect members after a church-run trust was seized by the Utah state government in the years following.

It’s largely been remodeled, but the 29,000-square-foot space has three floors, 44 bedrooms, two industrial kitchens and a secret room where Jeffs used to store records.

Luke Merideth, the co-executive director of the Short Creek Dream Center, which he runs with his wife Konstance, said members of the community had been reaching out to him in recent months to ask about taking down the old message. Media attention on it, largely through Netflix, left many feeling misrepresented about how far they’ve come, he said.

“It was hard to separate from the originator,” said Merideth, who was also elected this week to the Hildale City Council.

Removing it proved “hard to separate,” too, with the bricks being part of the structure of the building.

The letters, Merideth said, were formed using brick edgers, which are meant for lawns but had been paved into the chimney of the house. They had to be cut and knocked out and refilled with new bricks. But the staff couldn’t find the original brick size anywhere, so they had to shave down bricks bought in St. George to fill the spaces.

Looking at it now, it’s hard to tell where the new and old bricks meet. Which is the point, Merideth said.

A team of volunteers, including some from the organization’s sister Dream Center in Phoenix, came out to help. And many Hildale residents — including some former FLDS members — joined in the deconstruction, watched and cheered. Decker described it as “a very happy thing.”

The Short Creek Dream Center operates 40 beds at its main location and another 19 beds at a transition house in Colorado City. The Merideths, who took over as the center’s leaders in late 2020, said they work to help residents get jobs, food and support; and almost all of the services are free.

The center’s motto, Merideth added, is: “Find a need and fill it. Find a hurt and heal it.” It might be a little too long to fit on the chimney.