My Conversion Story and Testimony
(in 14 point for easy reading, i.e. not as long as it looks!!)
Like many, I was raised in a home without religion. My mother's family was Jewish, but we did not practice. My Bio-Dad was into the new age spiritualism type thing.
From my Bio-Dad, I had adopted a strong disdain of Christianity, and would often argue with Christian friends of mine, basically trying to rip them apart. I truly enjoyed the process of making them squirm. When I was 14, I was staying for a month with some friends of mine in Jackson, CA who I had known previous to my moving away. They were members of the church, but I still liked them in spite of this glaring fault. I thought of Christianity as a delusion, and when they would constantly tell me that I just needed to have faith, I would immediately responded that having faith in something that I could not see, and whose existence could not be proven, was nothing more than a delusion, and then quote "Humans have an infinite capacity for self delusion matched only by their ingenuity when trying to destroy themselves."
The friends with whom I was staying were heavily involved in missionary work, but we had an understanding that I was not going to join the church, and for them not to talk to me about it. The missionaries once asked them about whether I would be receptive to the gospel, and their response was "don't even bother", that I was closed up like a clam. I would deliberately go out of my way to do everything that I could to offend the missionaries and let them know what I thought about what they were doing. They took this as a personal challenge, and spent about two weeks just trying to even have a conversation with me. I don't recall them having much luck. I was a pretty obstinate kid.
One day the missionaries were using the house in which I was staying to teach a second discussion to an investigator, and I was exceptionally bored that day. I decided that I would try to pick an argument with them just for kicks. Their investigator was somewhat surprised, to say the least. I outlined my complaints with several doctrines. I remember that one of these was the flood. I could not imagine a loving father drowning all of his children when they did not obey him. Then I challenged them to prove to me that what they taught was true. To their credit, they would not argue with me.
They showed me Moroni's promise from the Book of Mormon: "And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, and with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things."
They then explained that religion was so important that they did not expect me to take their word for it, but that they wanted me to find out for myself whether their words were true. They testified of the power of prayer, saying that this was how I could come to find the answers. They basically gave me a test which I could perform, and the truth of that hit me very hard. I could no longer say that I had never been given a method of finding out. It rolled around in me all day, and I knew that I would perform such a test.
I remember that I was too proud to get on my knees, but chose instead to sit cross legged. I said that I did not know if there was a God or not, but if there was, and if what these men had told me was true, to please let me know. What I felt then was truly incredible. My whole body had a warm feeling, and I remember it spreading down from my head and out of my heart. I had this sense of exhilaration inside of me, like I were flying. I had a perfect knowledge come into my mind that it was true, and knew that I would dedicate my life in search of this new found truth. I had this feeling that my life was going to have to change a lot, but that did not matter. I was in tears with gratitude. It was so inconceivable that the supreme Lord of the universe would care enough about a tiny dot on one of millions of planets to hear and answer his prayers. I felt somewhat ashamed that I had been tormenting His servants, and grateful that I felt that it did not matter anymore. I knew that it was true as surely as I knew anything in my life. There was no doubt, and that great truth filled me from head to toe.
The next morning, I called the missionaries on the phone, and told them that I had prayed, received an answer and wanted to get baptized. They were pretty shocked, to say the least. I received the six discussions in a week, and was attempting to gather the strength to ask the permission of my family to join the church. It was interesting, I was thinking to myself that this being a Mormon thing would not be all that hard, I did not have problems with chastity, the word of wisdom, swearing, or anything else, or so I thought. I happened to stumble on a talk by President Benson entitled "Beware of Pride". As I watched this humble man speak these words, it literally felt like someone was punching me in the stomach. I was conscious of my guilt, and realized just how hard it was going to be for me to live this new life.
I told my mother several days later, and she showed up at 9:30 the next morning to take me away from these people who she thought were brainwashing me. She made it clear that I was not allowed to bring any books with me. I defied her and snuck scriptures into my bags. We lived 5 hours from Jackson, which meant that she had left at about 4:30am to come get me.
The time that followed was one of the darkest of my life. I love my family dearly, and always have, which made it even harder. For several weeks every member of my family was at my throat about the subject of the church. The fact that I clang to it so strongly just infuriated them the more. I remember one night my mom had a glass in her hand and just threw it against the floor in rage. Until the day I die, I don't think that I will ever forget the look on her face. In prayer, I realized that I was just going to have to wait to be baptized. I knew the basics of the gospel, and was committed to living them until the time when I was able to join the church.
I hid the scriptures behind my other books, and would get them out once everyone else had gone to bed. I would pray almost every day. I had a grandmother who was a member of the church, and the only contact that I had with the church for the next six years was when I would talk to her on the phone when no one else was around. I went all through high school keeping the commandments as best as I knew from the missionary discussions. After I graduated and went to college, I could have been baptized, but in prayer the Lord told me that it was not the right time, and I had to keep on waiting for that blessed day. To this day, I do not know for sure why I had to keep on waiting after enduring four years. My best guess is that if I had joined the church as soon as I went to college, my family might have discounted it as my not being able to cope with the rigors of life on my own and thus turning to a crutch. But whatever the reason, I trust the Lord knew exactly what He was telling me.
Two years later, when I was 20, the Lord told me that it was finally time for me to be baptized. I went home at spring break, and told my mother that I was going to join the church. What ensued was another incredible trial for me. My family was enraged again. My mother cut me off financially for a long time. My brother told me that he "thought religion was one of the worst evils to plague humanity, and he could not believe that his own brother was a part of it." He then announced that he had no respect for me anymore. My Bio-Dad told me that if he could get away with it, that he would like to kill the missionaries who taught me and write their names on the wall in their own blood. Furthermore, he somehow blamed his mormon mother for my conversion, and would go on tirades about how he wanted to kill her too (he had made an attempt before, when he was a teenager).
To further compound the problem, many of my friends who were atheists or protestants totally turned against me. Together, my family and almost all of my friends used all sorts of sophistry and arguments to convince me to abandon my path. My personal favorite of these (especially after I got my B.S. and M.S. degrees in geology) was from my dad. He said that there was local seismic activity which caused a fluctuation in the Earth's magnetic field which caused an "electrical storm" in the temporal lobe of my brain, which caused me to imagine my conversion experiences.
Throughout this time, I felt very alone, but knew that I was doing the right thing. I kept holding on to the fact that after six years of waiting, I was finally going to be able to have the greatest desire of my heart, to join the Lord's kingdom and become a saint.
I found the missionaries who had taught me six years previously, and flew to Salt Lake to meet them. On June 19, 1996 I was baptized in the tabernacle on temple square. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life to finally be able to make those covenants with the Lord. After I was baptized, I was just sitting there in my wet clothes, having the strangest feeling in the world. I did not know what it was. Just then, the person who baptized me turned to me and said, "Now you are clean and ready to receive the Holy Ghost". That was it! I was in awe. For the first time in my life, I was completely clean. I had been given a new beginning. I resolved to do the best I could with it.
I found out shortly that in the old days, the church sometimes called people on missions rather than them volunteering. Nobody had explained to me that this was no longer the case. I remember that I practically started crying, saying that I would not leave my school and life, that it was just too much to ask of me. Over the next several months, the Lord changed my heart completely and made it clear that I was supposed to serve a mission as soon as I could. I had no money, and was in debt up to my eyeballs. He said that He would take care of it, that I just needed to start preparing and He would provide the way. He did so by a mysterious surplus that popped up in the missionary funds of one of the other wards in the stake. If they did not use it, it would revert to the general fund, so they were searching around the stake for a missionary that needed support.
When I told my family that I was taking time off of school to be a missionary, I encountered the fiercest opposition yet. I recorded in my journal that "Mom says that she was devastated by my decision, and that she does not know who I am anymore, that she is ashamed of me and what I am doing. She considers herself a failure as a parent". My Bio-Dad stopped talking to me for a time. One of my housemates commented that she thought that their reaction was funny, that it was like I had told them that I was gay and a drug addict. I actually think that they would have taken that better. It is at this time that I really came to know that I was alone on the family front (except for my grandmother, who is now dead), and that things likely would never change in this life. This was a fundamental break. It was as if a piece of my heart and who I was had been cut out, leaving a bleeding hole inside of my chest. But I knew that I had the Lord, so I somehow kept holding on.
I was reminded frequently of the words of Joseph Smith to the quorum of the twelve before the major trials in Kirtland started. "God will feel after you, and He will take hold of you and wrench your very heart strings, and, if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the celestial kingdom of God." My family was one of the most important things in the world to me, and having the opposition come from them was without a doubt wrenching my heart strings.
These experiences have been one of the crosses which I have been called to bear, and the bearing of it has made me stronger. We each have our own, tailored to us, custom made. I am reminded of the scripture in 2 Nephi 9:18 "But, behold, the righteous, the saints of the Holy One of Israel, they who have believed in the Holy One of Israel, they who have endured the crosses of the world, … they shall inherit the kingdom of God, which was prepared for them from the foundation of the world, and their joy shall be full forever." I hope and pray for that day that I shall come to the Lord, and find this promise fulfilled for me, in spite of my many weaknesses and imperfections.
I entered the Missionary Training Center on September 11, 1997, and served a mission which proved to be one of the greatest and most challenging experiences of my life.
I am so grateful to have the gospel in my life. It has proven to be a sure foundation upon which I could try to build a life. It has been an incredible source of hope and inspiration during my dark hours. Franklin Roosevelt said that "when you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on." I have been just hanging on by my fingernails many times, and the Lord has always been there for me, giving me the strength to continue. I know that Jesus Christ endured all things, and trod the winepress alone. It is interesting that when He speaks of it, He always emphasizes that He was alone.
I know that this is His church, through the spirit and independent of any other person. There are many things that I do not like that people in the church do, that infuriate me in one way or another. But I know that it is the church of Jesus Christ, and that He stands at the head of it. It is for him that I am a member. I am so grateful that He personally bore all of my trials and pains, that through Him I can one day be free of this mortal coil and enter into His rest. I can not imagine just how exquisite the pains were which He bore. I try to think about all the sin, trials and pains that I have borne in my life, and then concentrate it into one moment, and then multiply it by about about 60 billion for this world alone. I literally can not fathom the atonement, and the incredible love which He must have had to go through that. I know that love is the strength which bore Him through these trials. It is that kind of love which I seek and pray for to enter my heart, that I may one day become more like Him. I am in awe of Him, and love Him with all of my heart. I have done my best to devote my life to Him, and will serve Him until the day I leave this mortal probation. At that time, I know that I will kneel before Him, and wet His feet with my tears. In that moment, all of the vicissitudes of this mortal life will have been worth it. In that day, as Elder Holland said, we will see that all of the Lord's judgments were just, and then we would have a few surprises. He remarked that he is counting on the surprises. So am I.