My Conversion Story

As requested by Timpani, here is my conversion story:

When we got married in 1967 I was a Methodist and Alan was a Baptist.  This wasn’t a problem, however we needed to make a decision sometime about what church we wanted to attend.  He was in the Navy when we got married and he left for a duty station in Guam right after our honeymoon.  About two months later I flew over to Guam to join him.  We didn’t live on base since he ranked too low at that time to qualify for married housing.  The only churches near us were Catholic which we hadn’t really considered joining, so we didn’t really go to any church while on Guam. 

After about 1 ½ years we were transferred to Okinawa.  We really liked it there.  Again we were not in military housing, but this time there was a Church of Christ nearby so we gave it a try.  Everyone was very nice there, but it didn’t feel quite right so we didn’t go back.  After we had been in Okinawa for a year they decided to send Alan to Viet Nam.  I was 8 months pregnant with our first child.  Luckily they allowed us to take a military plane back to the States.  It was pretty uneventful except for some long layovers along the way.  My ankles were about as big as my calves by the time we arrived home.

Alan was sent out to California for a training school prior to being shipped out to Viet Nam.  Michael was born shortly thereafter. (I was staying with my parents while he was gone.)  While he was in California Alan was able to visit some with his brother David who had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a few years before.  Alan began discussing the church with him and then with some buddies and realized that he believed the things he was telling them about the church.

He was allowed to return to Illinois before leaving for Viet Nam.  That was great since he hadn’t be able to be there when his son was born; at least he would be able to see him before going overseas for 13 months.  About 2 A.M. the night before he left, I was up feeding the baby and he began talking to me about the church.  I was about half conscious and said something to the effect, “How about if we talk about this when you get back and we will look into what this church has to offer.”  He said “Okay” and that was that.

When he got to Viet Nam he met up with some military men who were returned missionaries.  They began to teach him.  The next month I got a letter from him saying that he hoped that I understood but that he had been baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – that he knew that the gospel was true and that it would not be right to know it and not act upon it.  He said that if I wanted to look into it myself that there were missionaries in my area (and he gave me the information to contact them) that would be happy to teach me.  Meanwhile he contacted his brother & sister-in-law, who immediately sent me a big box of  books about the church.  I started reading the books and then called the elders at the number I was given.  I asked them if they would mind teaching me about their church.  Not too surprisingly, they were happy to do so.

As I read about the church I found that much of what I was reading, was what I had already believed.  The elders didn’t have to do a lot of teaching before I was ready to commit to baptism.  Luckily I didn’t smoke or drink tea, coffee or alcohol so there wasn’t any problem with having to give up any of that.  Tithing was not a problem.  I already believed that Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost were individual beings that were one in purpose and that Jesus was my Savior.  I believed from the time I was a child that absolute truth existed but didn’t think that it had yet been revealed by God to man.  The idea that there was a prophet on Earth that made that possible sounded very good to me.  Alan was baptized in August and I followed him into the waters of baptism in October of 1970.  It has been the best decision we could have ever made, especially now that the world has become so polarized in their feelings about what is right and wrong.  To know that our children and our grandchildren have the church and the gospel of Jesus Christ to guide them through life gives me such peace.