From Mess to LDS

Life isn't easy, or at least mine sure hasn't been. I won’t bore you with all the details of what went wrong. Just know that I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania and religion was the last thing on my mind. I lived next door to a Methodist church and they were some of the worst people I had ever met. (Not saying all Methodists are bad) I was genuinely turned off from any religion. Throughout  high school and college I made some bad choices, drinking, partying, and even street racing. However, to me, Life seemed great or was it... My life was missing something but I had no idea what. Then during my sophomore year of college I was forced to drop out of school and return home to take care of my ill aging parents. This would end up being the best thing that ever happened to me it’s also where my conversion story begins.

I was angry with my parents I thought that they had taken my future away from me, so I didn't move back into my childhood home. Instead I moved in with my best friend and her family. At the time I didn’t know my best friend was a Mormon. Actually I didn’t even know what a Mormon was. What I did know was that she had these boys called missionaries over all the time. Eventually the missionaries became my friends and one night while I was sitting on the couch one of the boys (our name for the elders) came and sat with me. We talked about our lives and how things didn’t always go as planned. It turns out elder Howell had gone through many of the same trials that I had. I asked him how he dealt with it, what helped him. He reached into his bag and handed me a copy of the book of Mormon. As he got up to leave he asked me to promise him something, that I would at least try to read it. I promised knowing full well that I wasn’t even going to touch it. What did I need religion for?

          Well I got the answer to that the next day. My dad called me said my mom had complications coming out of her heart surgery. That she was in the ICU. That drive to the hospital was one of the scariest of my life and once we got there and I sat by my mom's bedside. I didn’t know what to do. I was texting the boys and my best friend about what was going on. Then out of nowhere elder Banks asked me if I had tried praying. Sheepishly I told him no, that I didn’t know how. He called me and taught me how to pray. Kneeling by moms hospital bed I said my first prayer. I felt an overwhelming sense of peace that everything was going to be ok. I stood up and pulled the book of Mormon out of my bag and began to read. That feeling grew and kept growing. I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe I wanted to know more about why I felt like this. So I picked up my phone texted the missionaries and said I want to take the lessons. Three short months after that fateful text message I was baptized and it was the best decision I had ever made.