Our Conversion Stories

[AshleyB]

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[mes5464]

Thank you so much for sharing your conversion story. It was very touching and inspiring.

[iamse7en]

Wow. I absolutely loved that. Thank you so much for taking the time to share that with us. So touching. It really is amazing putting that backstory to some of your other posts... I am amazed that you are a relatively recent convert. You know more and seem more faithful than many of my friends who have been members their whole life. I guess when you know what it's like to not have something so precious, you are more grateful for it...

When such a simple thing (such as local members starting a "truth about mormonism" meeting) changes so many lives on an eternal scale, it's hard to doubt the Lord is much more involved in our lives than we know. I always seem to picture a laissez faire God, one who rarely intervenes, or that I just don't have the faith to have Him intervene in my life, except on grand/rare occasions. Or that I need to figure out everything on my own. Instead, He looks after us because we are His literal children. Your story is a testament to that, and it's very uplifting. Thanks again for sharing!

(I shared a spiritual experience on my introduction thread, so that will suffice for now.) I hope to read some others! Great idea for a thread.

[Rand]

Thebestsun, that was sweet and complete. It is just what I would imagine your story to be. I have such deep admiration for those who follow the path in such tender stages of development. Some of us are born into it and have a well paved road to choose. You did just what Nephi did, "not knowing before hand which way you should go", and you found just what you didn't know you were looking for. Thanks for sharing. Beautiful!!!

[jsk]

Here is my story....

I was born to parent who are members of the Church....my mom has been a member her whole life...my dad is a convert, and I have one brother and one sister. When I was young, my family was active in the Church, but as I got older, we became less active, although never inactive. While my parents taught us correct principles, my family didn't do a lot of the basic things that we are counseled to do. For example, we didn't have regular scripture study, family prayer or family home evening. Further, my folks didn't require us to go to Seminary or to youth activities if we didn't want to. Since I have lived my entire life on the East Coast, there never were that many LDS kids around, and when we moved from a close in suburb of Washington DC to a little town further away from the city, there was an even smaller group of LDS kids, and they were very cliquish and somewhat hostile to outsiders (as were many of the adults to my parents). Since I was pretty rebellious to begin with and didn't really have a firm Gospel foundation to fall back on, I used the unfriendliness and apathy of the people in that Ward as an excuse to fall away from the Church, and my parents permitted it (at the time they thought they were doing the right thing).

By the time I was 18 years old, I had pretty much become an atheist, although I kept that to myself. Interestingly, my long time girlfriend was a lapsed Mormon, who had a pretty orthodox LDS upbringing. Even though she was inactive, she still believed the Church was true...she was just too busy having fun with me to be bothered with the Church. Long story short...we got married several years later when I was 23 and she was 25. Neither her parents nor my parents really knew the extent of our inactivity (especially mine), and her parents were devastated that we didn't get sealed in the Temple. In any event, after we got married, my wife started going to Church on occasion, and I would sometimes go with her, although I was terribly uncomfortable during Sacrament meeting and would hang out in the hallway so I could avoid the Deacons passing the Sacrament. After we had been married a year, my wife became unexpectedly pregnant. After she found out she was pregnant, she told me she wanted to return to full time church activity, and wanted me to join her. I told her that she was free to do what she wanted, but that I didn't believe the Church was true (even then, I didn't have the courage to tell her I thought all religion was the opiate of the masses). I will never forget her looking at me and telling me that I didn't know enough about the Church to say that, and she asked me to read the Book of Mormon and sincerely pray to know if it was true or not. She told me if I did that and decided the Gospel was false, that she would never again bother me about the Church, as long as I agreed that she could take our unborn child (and any others we might have) to Church. Sounded like a great deal to me, so I took her up on it.

In any event, I began reading the Book of Mormon, and I finished it in just a day or two...it was like I was remembering things that I had forgotten. When I reached the end, I got on my knees to pray, and I remember thinking that if there really was a God and if he made it known to me that the Book of Mormon was true, that I would become the best Mormon I could be, but I still didn't think anything would happen. As I began to pray, I heard a voice in my head, but it was as clear and as powerful as any voice I've ever heard...this voice said "The Book of Mormon and the Gospel is true, and you have always known it was true." Wow....I was really pierced to the depths of my soul...and I began to weep for the first time in many years...I wept because I felt such joy at knowing the truth, but also out of despair for rejecting that truth when it had been in front of me all the time...I also wept for all the lost years...I wept for the mission I should have served and for the people I should have taught.

In any event, after this experience, I completely changed my life...my wife and I got sealed in the temple right before our first child was born, and I have been wholly active in the Church ever since! I am so grateful to my Savior, who made it possible for a soul as rebellious as mine to repent and return to the fold. I am also grateful to my wife, who loved me enough to force me to face hard truths, and for the many other people (family and friends) who embraced me (literally and figuratively) when my testimony was fragile.

This is my (condensed) story....

[iamse7en]

jsk, thank you! What a fabulous story. It is really inspiring to read these stories.

[AshleyB]

Wow, thanks so much for sharing that. What a great story. Im so glad you decided to share that with us. I hope you and your family will have all the blessings HF wants to give you.

[AshleyB]

iamse7en, I really enjoyed reading your story and its part of what made me decide to start this thread so I thought I might copy and paste here in case people have missed it in the other section.

My Story- iamse7en

I joined this forum this past summer after googleing for LDS sites that were sympathetic to Ron Paul and political liberty. Since then, I have been greatly enriched and learned more about how "awful" our situation really is. However, I never really introduced myself, so I'm now going to bore those who decide to read past this sentence.

I grew up in a large family on the east coast. My parents were and are typical Republicans who watched/read the "news" every day, and always voted Republican. I learned about the values of the free market, and how big government impeded economic prosperity. Growing up, I didn't really care much about politics. I was mostly apathetic to current events and never took a deep or interested look into politics. I never had much interest in reading books or increasing in knowledge; I was a typical high school kid who played sports, video games, and hung out with friends.

Spiritually, I was touched by the Spirit from an early age. My parents and older siblings were great examples, who believed and paved the way. All went to BYU and served missions. I immediately believed the Gospel was true and paramount, but the charge to "gain your own testimony" weighed on my mind. Early morning seminary piqued my interest to study deeper. One night, I went to bed like any other weeknight at an early hour, and out of the blue I woke up in the middle of the night (which I never do), wide awake, with the strong prompting to "read the scriptures." So I did. I read for about 45 minutes in the D&C (following along with seminary), and I had the prompting to get on my knees and settle the issue: is this really true, and would I receive an answer/communication from above? I prayed fervently for about 15 minutes, almost as if to prove to myself how seriously I wanted to know... what followed was a supernatural experience: one characterized by extreme enlightenment and clarity as well as pure, uninhibited joy, which swelled my whole person. Mind and heart, they told me, but I had no idea it would have been that powerful. I was blown away by the experience. I knew I couldn't have produced that experience on my own mind. I knew it was external, it was intervention, it was from the Lord. Although I had a somewhat rebellious string to me (what kid doesn't, right), and fell into sin a bit (though not very grievous), this experience, I believe, always kept me grounded and reminded me of the power and joy that comes from staying close to God.

I then went to BYU and was called on a mission (2003). It's funny... I always wanted to go to Africa, and I was confident I would be going there. I'm not sure why, I just was. Sure enough, I was called to South Africa. My mission was absolutely life-changing. I developed an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. I had a mission president that allowed and encouraged us to read all types of books. I was blessed to have parents who said they'd buy me any doctrinal book I wanted. I ordered tens of books, read and devoured them all. Mostly, I concentrated on books of doctrine from the early brethren. My thirst was so unquenchable that I decided to start waking early on my mission to study more. At first it was an hour early, then it evolved to around 90 or 100 minutes early. I had some amazing experiences in those mornings, as well as teaching others. I wanted to progress as much as I possibly could in those short 2 years. I loved my mission more than anything else.

When I came home and got back to school at BYU (2005), I found it difficult to maintain that spiritual fervor (as anyone does) with less time studying and less time serving others. I still didn't have much interest in current events or politics, thinking they were trivial in the grand scheme of things. I would rather spend my time reading Orson Pratt talks!

I met my wife within 6 months of coming home, and got married about a year and a half of dating.

However, living in the world, it can sometimes be necessary to at least keep up with what's going on in the world. I decided to major in economics, and picked up a few books (Freakonomics, Milton Friedman books, etc). My daily dose of news was Bill O'Reilly. (I know, how embarrassing!) My thought was, I would like some news, his is the most popular cable show, so why not? I bought into quite a bit of what he said, other than his statist tendencies on economic matters. I was a big Romney supporter in the primaries (2007). I brushed off his "flip flops," rationalizing that that happens sometimes in politics, or he really did change his mind. My parents are actually friends of Mitt Romney, and I met him many different times. He is a good man who means well, but he also wants to be president very, very badly. I even gave $100 (which is a LOT to a college kid) to his campaign. Oh, don't I wish I had put that in silver instead! I believed he could win and was quite crushed by McCain winning. As far as the other candidates went, I hated them all except Fred Thompson. My only experience with Ron Paul was in the debates. I thought he was an anti-war liberal. I was confused why he was in the debates. I knew nothing about his other views. I went about my way, reading sites like Hot Air, National Review, Townhall, etc and listening to Rush Limbaugh. (Don't worry, I get cured eventually!) I knew Obama would be terrible for our country, but I wasn't too enthused about McCain. I was too lazy to register to vote and didn't think my vote mattered anyways.

Then, in 2008, the financial crisis hit, my senior year of college. With my major being economics, I had a deep interest in the issue. I wanted to know the causes and cures. The idea of handing over trillions of dollars to banks just didn't bode well with me. I didn't think Romney would support this bailout, but he did. So it begins. To make a long story short, I discovered the only school of thought within economics that properly explained the causes of the crisis: Austrian Economics. They are commonly associated with "libertarianism." I read Thomas Woods' book, Meltdown, which changed my world-view of economics, particularly money and banking. The forward was written by, none other, the anti-war liberal, Ron Paul. Huh? I started reading his books. Oh wait, maybe this guy is completely right! Okay, he's right on everything except foreign policy, I told myself. I dug deeper. I discovered Lew Rockwell, Murray Rothbard, Henry Hazlitt. The pure logic was just music to my ears, and slowly but surely, I came to learn they were also right about foreign policy.

I started to learn some real history. I had to almost un-learn what school taught me about American history, the CIA, our presidents, and the host of wars with which we were involved. I had bought into that patriotic mumbo jumbo before. To put it mildly, I guess I was a neocon, but only because I was naive and had not been exposed to the real history and explanation. My source of news/info was FOX and mainstream Republicanism. (Thank goodness for the internet.)

I became a die-hard Ron Paul supporter by 2009. I started reading libertarian websites, still clinging to a few libertarian-leaning 'conservative' sites. As time moved along, I eventually discovered the LDS Freedom Forum in 2010. A friend suggested I read "None Dare Call it Conspiracy," as encouraged by Elder Benson. I knew our government was screwed up, but I had thought it was good intentions. Little did I know. And then I started to wake up. I learned about the banking cartel, the military-industrial complex, and the history of the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and so on. Things started to make a lot more sense. It was people on this forum (people like Col. Flagg, Dr. Jones, Mazal, LoveIsTruth, Mahonri, LukeAir, moonwhim) that opened my eyes about 9/11. A few years earlier, I thought the "Truthers" were crazy crack-pots. But then again, I had also, at one point, thought Ron Paul was as well. I saw Col. Flagg's documentary, Dr. Jones' lectures, 9/11 Mysteries, Loose Change, etc. The evidence was clear that there is something sinister going on here. More importantly, all of this "waking up" has led me to pray more fervently, love my family more, and prepare temporally and spiritually for tumultuous times to come. I enjoy this community and look forward to learning even more. So, thank you.

I now temporarily live in the Midwest, I have twin girls (now 10 months old), and being a father is one of the most fun and entertaining things I've done. I love reading (mostly Economics/Libertarianism & Church Doctrine/History). I almost wish I could move to the mountains, and just read Gospel books all day long. I could read hundreds of them. I've become somewhat of a news junkie now - read sites like LRC, ZH, DP every day. I'm sure I will be addicted to following RP's 2012 campaign. I still enjoy "getting away" through the avenues of movies and college/pro basketball and a few other sports. I'm a die-hard BYU basketball fan and get genuinely upset when they lose.

I'm glad I discovered this forum, because I enjoy associating with others who love and defend liberty, both temporal and spiritual. Thanks to all of you, and looking forward to more growth and progression!

And that's my story, in a nutshell.