My Path to Enlightenment

My path to the church came quite unexpectedly to everyone around me, including myself.  As I grew up, I never found myself quite a religious person.  My mother and father were not religious at the time and I lived my life as well as I could.  Eventually though I sought out church to explain things in the world.  I eventually started attending a Nazarene church with a friend of mine while I was a freshman in High School.  I could not find what I wanted at the Nazarene church.  While it may be a church others find comfort in, for me, I felt nothing.  So as quickly as I started attending church, I had stopped. 

I had a few close friends growing up in High School but was not someone from what you would call the “popular” crowd.  One of my friends was a Mormon, born and raised in the church.  I did not know much of the Mormon religion and really did not want to start looking into it.  I felt that religion did not really play a part in my life.  As we got closer to graduating, he got closer to leaving for his mission.

He would call me on a somewhat regular basis and we would talk.  I knew he was not supposed to be calling me, but it was good to hear from him and talk about the week and what we each went through.  He told me a lot about his mission and what he was doing.  It was interesting to hear, but again, did not interest me too terribly much.  Each time we ended our phone calls we would always have the same exchange.

“I’m going to talk to you about the church when I get back,” he would say.

“No you aren’t,” I would respond.

With that our conversations would come to an end until the next week.

One day, after talking to him, I decided that I would pick up a Book of Mormon and I would talk to him about his religion, but to debunk it.  I would find things, in his own religious text that contradict what he would tell me.  I was going to do something that no one else had done and that was going to take apart the Church of Latter-day Saints using their own text.

I cracked it open and started reading.  The most remarkable thing happened; I could not put it down.  It was a compelling work that made me want to read more.  I found myself studying it and within just a few days I had read it front to back.  I was amazed at what I read and how it made me feel.  It was like my eyes had been opened to something that I had wanted to know for a long time.

That next time that he called, when it came time to end our conversation, he started our usual exchange.

“I’m going to talk to you about the church when I get back.”

“No you aren’t,” I replied.

This time though, there was a pause.  Maybe it was how I said it, maybe it was something he understood but carefully he asked a new question, “Why not?”

“Because I’m just waiting on you to get back so I can get baptized.”

That is how I became a Mormon.