Karen: My Conversion to the LDS Church

Hi. I’m Karen and I’d like to share with you how I came to know the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I still recall standing at the top of the stairs as a child and wondering who I was and what my purpose here on Earth was and hungering for that knowledge. I had no real idea where to find it. But the question about my purpose was always there. I attended a Christian denomination at the time and I posed to those that taught me questions that, to them, were unanswerable.

I remember asking how can God and Jesus be the same person? And I was told that was a mystery. I asked who participated in the war of heaven. I reasoned there would have had to be someone there besides Jesus if there was a war in Heaven. And I was told that was a mystery. I had other questions that I posed and again, the answers were not given. While I was grateful for the fundamentals that I’ve learned, I knew that the full truth was not contained in the walls of the church to which I’ve been going.

So I kind of drifted for a while, not really knowing about God and not really knowing what my purpose was. And at that point, I stopped attending church and I searched in the only ways I could search to know more. But, eventually, as the years went on, I began to despair that I would never know the purpose of my life. And I had a hard time moving forward because, without that, I had no real way of measuring who I was, how I was doing, what I should do. I was tired even of the routine things like fumbling for your house keys in the cold and studying theories in classes without having a way to evaluate them. I just didn’t seem to have that sense of ultimate purpose.

And yet, I found that as I read and I looked for truth, that my search was sped and there was a divine source leading me one, although I didn’t know that God and truth had anything to do with each other. I remember taking notes even as I read things in a little notebook that I carried with me for about 10 years, thinking “I’m just assembling this massive jigsaw puzzle and one day I’ll figure it out – I have a few corner pieces and a fire center pieces, but one day this will all come back together”.

So I kept looking and I think the questions about the purpose of life would continue to spring up whenever we’re given the least chance. Almost like a flower in springtime. And I would revisit those questions again and try to find out more and eventually, tuck them away for a season. And that continued to be the case until, I think finally the will to live ran bare. I just didn’t have that desire anymore after a certain point. I just began to despair about life and that I would never find the answers to these questions in my heart.

So, I remember sitting on the edge of my studio bed, despondently one day, looking over my circumstances and thinking “Why go on?” Why go on without this key to the universe? And I was caught then by surprise, actually by a gentle but profound string of impressions that I now recognize came from my Heavenly Father, through the Spirit. And those impressions – it was in the form of a voice coming to my mind and the thoughts that came to me were “Well, you have to have the courage to live on. Every moment of love and discovery in your life has not been wasted. You’ll find the purpose of life.”

And while I could not understand fully how those impressions came and appeared on the screen in my soul, so to speak, I accepted them confidently and totally. And so, I spent a few months really contemplating my life and searching further, again in the only ways I knew how to search for the answers to those questions. I prepared myself for the knowledge that was promised me and then, I had a remarkable experience one evening.

I remember I was out in a beautiful summer night. I was jogging in the neighborhood, under the light of this exquisite full moon and this is difficult to explain – and I’m not sure I have exactly the words to portray what happened. But somehow, as I reflected over my life, it sort of summed itself up in a way that it never had before and I caught a swift panorama of my entire life in just a split second. And then, at that moment, I was infused with complete un-doubtable witness that God lived.

And I knew for myself for the first time in my life that he lived independent of any other person and it was a knowledge that I can’t deny. I remember that I sat down the curve and started to cry tears of joy – I was so excited. I felt I belonged, I felt I was loved and I felt a deeper sense of connection with everyone around me, immediately. But my questions then were, well – what about Christ, what about the things I’ve been taught, what does he expect of me, what’s my responsibility towards him? What exactly is this relationship supposed to be and what do I do now?