I was asked to talk at Stake Conference about my conversion experience! I was going to speak on Sunday morning to the entire Stake, but it was moved to the adult session and I *only* had to speak in front of a mere 300 or so adults.
Here are the notes from my talk, but it's not exactly what I said since I like to wing it once I'm up there.
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April 13th will be the two year anniversary of my baptism. However, my conversion story starts over twenty-five years ago when I was 10 years old. My then 15 year old sister had planned a night of binge drinking with a group of her friends. Since I wanted no part of the aftermath of that I asked to spend the night with a friend. My sister was dropped off on our front porch late that night and she was unconscious. Thankfully, my mom is a nurse, and she checked for vital signs. My sister was not breathing and she had no pulse. While my dad called for an ambulance my mom resuscitated her. My parents spent a long night in the emergency room.
As luck or fate would have it, my dad shared the ER waiting room with a group of Mormons. One of the youth had broken his leg badly during a ball game and this group was there waiting as well. Someone noticed my dad and offered to pray with him. He gladly accepted. Very soon, he was being taught by Elder Dave Arnold and Elder Ken Vineyard [No, I don’t remember their names, but they are written in the Book of Mormon that they gave my dad. And if anyone happens to know someone who served a mission in OKC in 1984, I’d love to hear about it].
I honestly don’t remember much about this time. I know I listened during at least one of the missionary lessons while my mom hid in the bedroom to show her lack of support. I know that my mom and dad and I attended one Sacrament meeting together. I remember my dad’s baptism and confirmation. I also remember the onslaught of anti-Mormon literature that arrived in the mail from my grandparents… I’m not sure how long my dad was active, but it was only for a few months. Several years later he wrote to Salt Lake City and had his name removed from the church rolls.
When I was in college my next door neighbor was an inactive member of the church, but she had nothing but positive things to say about it. She introduced me to her friend who would later send me a copy of The Book of Mormon, at my request… I was interested, but I didn’t want to talk to any missionaries. By that time I was married, and my husband read my email request to this friend, and he was very unhappy with me. He told me if I wanted to go to church I needed to go back to the church I had been raised in. My husband is Jewish though not religious, and when we were married I was not religious either. I considered converting to Judaism, and did quite a bit of studying, but no one was terribly supportive of this endeavor so I stopped.
Now we move to September 2004, when my little Hannah was not quite 2 years old. I was a stay at home mom and I spent much of my spare time on the internet talking with other like-minded moms. I didn’t have much of a support group in real life. I had a couple of friends who I rarely saw, and I only saw my family once a week since they lived an hour away. So, I became very close to several moms in this online mommy group. One of these moms is named Venita and she lives in Alabama and she is LDS. At the time she had 6 kids and the youngest was named Christian who was 13 months old. One day I read a message that Christian was really sick and she asked that we pray for him to get better. I did pray for that little boy to get better, but he didn’t. He died. A few days later Venita wrote that her husband had given her a blessing and in that blessing she learned the reason why Christian died so young… but Venita didn’t tell us that reason. I was totally consumed by this concept. I HAD TO KNOW what that reason was. I didn’t want to pry into this family’s life. Surely she had her reasons for not telling the group. But I HAD TO KNOW. So, I sent her a private email telling her that I was compelled to know why. She wanted me to call her on the phone because it was too personal to just type in an email. I called her… and it was difficult for me to hear the pain in her voice. Christian was on this earth for 13 months "
to remind people that Christ exists for them, to be a light unto people and bring them to Christ." Venita was positive that was talking about me personally… Her little baby died so that *I* would find Christ. That was pretty powerful to me. I really didn’t want to believe her, but I promised that I would do something…
I had already read quite a bit of the Book of Mormon, I’d gotten stuck somewhere in Alma (which has happened to me more than once!!) and quit reading. However, I found the Gospel Principles manual on LDS.org and I started reading that. I had a hard time getting past what I had been previously taught and I had a laundry list of things I didn’t agree with… But I wasn’t praying about these things I was just thinking about them.
In 2005 my son was born and we moved to Evansville when he was 2 months old. I literally knew NO ONE.
In August of 2006 I was busily reading some anti-Mormon book when the doorbell rang. Guess who it was? Missionaries! The timing did not feel coincidental to me. My husband was in Mexico for the week, so I told them I was interested in being taught. They wanted me to come to church on Sunday and I said I would, and on Saturday Tasha Denton showed up with brownies to remind me to come. I thought that was really funny, though brownies are always a good idea!
I came to church and I LOVED it, and I definitely wanted to come back. However, my husband had come home from Mexico and he was greatly displeased. We had a huge fight, and he asked me not to go back. I went back the next Sunday and felt more welcome than I ever have in any other church. Ann Price who was in the RS presidency spotted me immediately and helped me get Hannah to Sunbeams (which she loved, and was taught by Bro and Sis Felt) and took me to the Gospel Principles class where Elijah toddled around the room.
However the problem this caused at home wasn’t worth it at the time. I like to avoid contention, so I didn’t come back… for a while.
Friday, September 15, 2007 my world was turned upside down when I found out about some very poor choices my husband had made. I seriously considered packing up my 4 year old, 2 year old, and 2 month old and driving the 12 hours to Oklahoma back to my parents. But I didn’t. Good old Venita suggested that I should go back to church on Sunday. And I did, completely out of SPITE!
I was shocked when Pres Rogers who was our Bishop then remembered me from the year before. The missionaries weren’t exactly sure what to do with me, and none of them approached me about being taught. I wasn’t exactly sure what to think about that, but I wasn’t ready anyway. In November I asked to be taught the discussions, but that set of missionaries had a tendency to cancel at the last minute. I was starting to get a little discouraged about it, but I kept coming to church. Then one evening in March, when my inlaws were in town, Elder Smith and Elder Stirland knocked on my door. They were the new missionaries. They were persistent. They never cancelled a lesson. They brought treats on several occasions because Elder Smith liked to cook. On St Patrick’s day they brought green Jello, which wasn’t a big hit at our house, but the sentiment was deeply appreciated. Elder Smith pushed me to set a date for my baptism. Even though I’d been happily attending church for SIX months I really didn’t want to. I still didn’t feel like I had a testimony that Joseph Smith was a prophet. However, Elder Smith was definitely in tune with the Spirit, and he would drop off note cards with scriptures on them pretty regularly. One of them was D&C 6:22-24 “
Verily, verily, I say unto you, if you desire a further witness, cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart, that you might know concerning the truth of these things. Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God? And now, behold, you have received a witness: for if I have told you things which no man knoweth have you not received witness?”I set a date, and I was baptized on April 13, 2008.
As for my family? My husband now says that joining the church has made me happier than anything else. That’s quite a statement considering a few years ago he told me he wouldn’t have married me if he’d known I’d become a Mormon…
It’s been a long road for me, and it stretches ahead of me into Eternity! I hope to one day be sealed to my entire family in Temple… but it will take a LOT of prayers to get there I think.
