Today in our Stake Conference (a stake is a group of local congregations in a geographic area) Elder Ruben Acosta suggested that it was important to have a gospel conversation at least once each week. I decided I would do it. I will tell my "conversion to a religious life "story.
When I was a child my siblings and I would walk about a mile to church at the South Tunbridge church in the summer. It was a nice walk and nice to attend church there. As I grew up I sang in the choir and became active in the youth group, a group of teenagers I loved with all my heart. Eventually I taught Sunday School to a small group of four year old children, which was such a delight to me.
One day when I was in sixth grade our teacher, Mrs. Bird, took us to the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial as part of our local history learning segment. There was a life-sized statue of Joseph Smith. The missionary who was talking with us told us that he was a prophet of God, and the prophet of the Restoration. In that moment something whispered to me that this was true. I knew in that moment that he truly was a prophet of God. The only prophets of God I had known of before that were Moses and Noah and Enoch, and a few others. This was exciting to me that there had been a prophet of God on the earth in the 1800s and that he lived right next door to my Dewey and Burbank ancestors.
Five years later two young missionaries came to our farm and talked to our family about the great plan of happiness of our Father in Heaven. They gave us copies of The Book of Mormon and invited us to read it and then pray to God to know if this was truly His word, like The Bible is His word. They promised us that if we would read this scripture and pray about it, we could have a confirming warm feeling in our bosom which would confirm to us that it was true. I did read The Book of Mormon. I did pray about it...my first kneeling prayer, and my first vocal prayer. Just as the missionaries told us could happen, I did have a burning in my bosom and immediately felt that The Book of Mormon was the word of God and I wanted to read it all the way through. Since that day I have read it all the way through repeatedly, in fact, multiple times each year. It lifts me up each time.
So, what to do with this new knowledge? The missionaries invited us to attend church. Our whole family began attending church at the meetinghouse which was near the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial. Each time we went, I felt more and more that this was a good place to attend church, though I missed my friends at the South Tunbridge church. One day I decided I had to be baptized even though at that time I was afraid that my dear friends would no longer have anything to do with me if I changed churches. I don't know what made me think that but fear was in my heart. It would be so hard to "lose" those friends, but I had a witness in my heart that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the restored church of Jesus Christ which He had established when He walked the earth in the meridian of time. The church He restored through the prophet Joseph Smith. The church that has a living prophet today. I had to be true to that truth which I felt even if I was shunned.
So...on 25 June 1967 I entered the waters of baptism with my sister. This has made all the difference in the way I have lived my life. Not that I lived a bad life at that time, but just not as full a life, even though I did try to do good. Now I had a goal...to become closer to living like Jesus Christ in my actions every day so that I could live with Him and with our Heavenly Parents again one day. I continue to try to do that.
Fifty years and one week after I entered that water and was baptized by total immersion to clean my sins away and become a new creature in Christ, a mission call came for my husband and me to serve as full-time missionaries in the Oregon Portland Mission, just as those two missionaries so long ago were serving full-time who taught our family precious gospel truths.
Some of those truths are: that our spirits have always existed; that we lived with our Heavenly Parents before this life; that we came to earth to acquire a body and to learn and grow and make choices; that one day we would leave this mortal existence and return to the spirit world where we would wait for the judgement then be assigned to a kingdom of glory where we can actually live with Them again and with our loved ancestors.
Some of the good things we could choose to do during our mortal sojourn were: to be baptized, to study the scriptures, to pray, to attend church, to serve others, to share the gospel message of Christ with others who could choose to embrace it or not as seemed right to them, and to marry for time and eternity in a temple of God and bring families into the world.
These things I have done. They have brought me great joy. I am so grateful for the life I have been able to live. I am also so grateful that my friends in that long ago church did not turn their backs on my but are my friends still today, even though we do not physically see one another often. And while we still have a few months left on this full-time mission, I hope to continue to do my best to serve God and my fellow beings in every way I can.
