How to Be a Member Missionary

“If we needed prophets for the first days, why don’t we need them for the last days?”

“What’s the point of having a family if you can’t have it forever? I don’t want to be in heaven if they aren’t with me.”

“Why do I keep feeling like I’ve lived before?”

These kinds of questions kept Sunday School teachers challenged or annoyed when I was a child and teen searching for a church. From the time I was small, I loved going to church. Since my parents had different religions, and seldom attended either church, I went with anyone who would take me. I was full of questions and seemingly strange ideas.

As I got older, going to just any church no longer satisfied. I developed an intense longing to find the one true church. Most churches told me all churches were true, but that made no sense to me. True is true. They all taught different things and if the doctrines were important enough to teach, I knew they were important enough that God wanted us to know what was really true. The God I was searching for was kind, loving, and honest, and therefore, I knew He would tell me what was right, as soon as I figured out where He was.

I ruled out churches that attacked other religions, because I wanted a church that had so much to say about its own beliefs its leadership had no time to worry about the other religions. I ruled out those with harsh, unloving Gods. I could feel His love. My God would be a loving One. I ruled out churches with no rules. I liked rules. If God was my Father, then He had to have rules, just as my own father did. Good fathers have rules.

Over time, I became aware of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At the age of ten, while touring the visitor’s center at a temple with my family, I learned about the Book of Mormon and felt something so powerful I could hardly take it in. Whatever it was I was feeling, I wanted it to stay forever and something deep inside told me it was about the book the missionary was discussing. I was so overwhelmed I remembered nothing else of the tour but the extraordinary joy that book gave me. At the end of the tour, the missionary told my father he felt impressed to give me a copy. My father was puzzled that I had been singled out of a very large group, but he knew I loved books of all kinds and asked me if I wanted it. I nodded, too happy to speak. I took the book and held it close to my heart, hoping to keep the feeling inside.

In the coming years, I met members of the Church and learned bits and pieces about their beliefs. I began to notice that some of the beliefs I’d developed on my own were practiced in their church. How had I known about them? They believed families were forever. For me, this was a critical aspect of my search. No loving God would tear my family from my arms for eternity and then tell me I was going to be happier than I’d ever been before, spending eternity without them. That sounded cruel, and my God wasn’t cruel. I knew He’d give me the chance to be with my family forever.

Eventually, a friend invited me to come to church and see for myself what the Mormons were all about. A turning point came when another friend taught me how to pray to know if the church was true. Until then, I had tried to tackle the project intellectually, with long lists that told me nothing in the end. The answer wasn’t instantaneous, but over time, I was instructed by God to join the church. I was a bit worried, since I still didn’t know it was true—although I hoped with all my heart that it was—but I had been raised to trust God, and so I did as He asked and was baptized when I was seventeen. I continued to pray and progressed from hoping it was true, to thinking it was true, and then to believing it was true. About a year after baptism, I knew the church was true. I knew it so well I was amazed at how real it was. I learned that not all knowledge comes through the brain, and trust began.

It had been very hard for me to turn off the intellect, having been raised to analyze everything. I had never really trusted anything before until I had found intellectual proof of the information myself. It was important for me to relinquish this need to be in charge because I needed to learn to trust God completely, even when I didn’t have all the answers. I needed to learn to hear His voice and obey His commandments, and this comes only through the Holy Ghost, not through lists, studies, and analysis. I learned to know how completely He loves me and wants me to return to Him.

Over the years, I’ve faced challenges and worries. God didn’t always do things the way I thought He should. He didn’t always give me what I asked for, since what I asked for wasn’t always the best. Life didn’t become perfect, as I’d thought it would. People have tried to pull me away and to plant doubts. It has been that personal one-on-one, heart to heart conversation I learned to hold with God at the start that has allowed me to stay strong, to be where God wanted me to be, and to know without question. My conversion started with a Book of Mormon, but in the end, it was always about prayer and faith. I learned that happiness was found in knowing and doing what God wanted, not in my facts and figures.

I feel my testimony is so strong because I listened only to God, not man, in making my decisions. In the end, the only opinion that matters is God’s and that’s what my long conversion process taught me.