My Conversion
I think I always had a testimony. Ever since I was a little girl, I felt happy doing what was right, and I knew that God was logical. It was logical to me that he loved me, and it was logical to me that he would want me to live with him again. Knowing the history of the how God has always communicated with his children through prophets, the Restoration just fit right in. After reading the Book of Mormon at the age of 14, I felt that the Book of Mormon was true, and I could see the positive effects of reading and applying it in my life. But sometimes I struggled to put myself in that narrative. I knew it was true for others, but was it true for me? Did it apply to me? And as much as I had a complete testimony that God knew what was best for his children, I struggled to accept that he knew better than me on what would make me happy.
When I went to college I was happy being myself, or who I imagined myself to be. Fun, ambitious, and respected. And for one semester, I lived my dream life. But it wasn’t my dream. I wasn’t happy, and the small promptings started coming that there was something God was trying to tell me. He knew there was something better for me.
I remember thanksgiving break, going home for the break and receiving the strong prompting that I needed to leave my options open, that I should apply to BYU’s nursing program. I prayed a lot over the break, asking God what was His will for me. I remember later after the break, taking a big breath, saying one last prayer of Heavenly Father, help me know if I am making a big mistake, and after my feeling of calm didn’t go away, dropping all my classes, and enrolling in the pre-nursing classes. Then started some of the hardest months of my life. As I began work in these new nursing classes, I realized something. I realized that these kind of classes were very hard for me. Anatomy was a challenge to memorize day in and day out the insertions, structures, and articulation points of the body. It did not come natually to me at all. I remember calling my mom one day in tears because I had gotten a bad score on the midterm. I cried to her, asking her how it was possible that God would have me do all this, all theese hard classes, and then not be accepted into the Nursing program. I told her that I was (in my mind) failing classes that would prepare me for a program and major that I didn’t even want to be in. I remember falling into a time of high stress, where I was always tired, and lost many of my desires to do things. It was also at this time when I was deciding to go on a mission or not, and I felt that the heavens had closed on me. I wanted firm answers, and most of the time, I received only cold lonely silence.
I think I had to go through this because God had to let me try by myself, get to the point where I literally could not go further without Him. So that, out of necessity, I would trust Him. And I remember one night sobbing to my parents over the phone, sitting on the cold concrete stairs of the Provo Library and after I stopped crying, my heart finished breaking. My sense of inadequacy and frustration overwhelmed me, and I let it go, and prayed, giving it all to the Lord. I remember feeling a sense of peace and love, that replaced all of my negative feelings almost instantaneously when I made the decision to give my will to the Lord. I did not realize it at the time, but this was one of the first times that I really used the atonement in my life. And with my broken heart and contrite spirit, I pressed forward. And little by little, although looking back, these things happened miraculously fast, I started improving, deciding, receiving confirmations, and my life became joyful. The classes became easier because instead of being upset I didn’t understand every concept, I found others who understood less than me, and I tutored them, and they tutored me. I discovered that one of the best ways I learn is teaching, and as I made my studies more service oriented and outwardly focussed, I started learning more effectively. I did more, but felt like my burden was loads lighter. I recieved exellent grades that semesters, I decided to go to Jerusalem, I started my mission papers, I gained confidence in my divine worth, and I felt really genuinely happy for the first time in a year. I did not know what the future held, but I knew with all my heart that I would not be left alone to carry the burden.
When I got to Jerusalem, I remember feeling the spirit of the place. It is everywhere, and as I prepared for my mission in the same place that Jesus Christ performed His, I had an overwhelming desire to be who the Lord desired me to be. I remember for the first time in 5 years, I began to understand my patriarchal blessing, and desire to become that woman. I also was around many returned missionaries, and my focus became increasingly narrowed as I prepared to consecrate myself to the Lord for the next 18 months.
In the MTC, everything was wonderful. I felt the spirit, I was learning, I was making lifelong friends, I was seeing little tiny miracles everyday. The one notable thing that occurred in the MTC was that I got to a point in my second to last week where my Spanish was not as good as I desired it to be, so I decided to do an english fast and in that week I began to be able to communicate myself in Spanish. I got to the mission being the american missionary that knew the most Spanish from the new batch of misisonaries (although to be honest it wasn’t much). I then started my training.
I quickly realized that the mission was much harder than I thought. I think for the first time in my life I felt as if my weaknesses not only hurt my salvation, but also the salvation of others. I again had started thinking that my own talents and skills would be enough, and I quickly learned I was very wrong. I, partly due to my pride and the successful 2 yr and 18 month missions of my grandmother, sister, and mother, never thought about going home, and I never talked of my struggles to my family in my weekly letters. But inside I was in turmoil, and I cried almost everyday. I was overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and remorse as I would make mistakes, become weaker, which would make me more susceptible to the temptations of the adversary, causing me to make more mistakes, and continue in this hopeless downward spiral.
On Christmas Eve 2014, after hearing word of my struggles, two of the sister training leaders came over, and one of them told me “Sister, you will never be happy until you learn to understand the atonement.” She challenged me to read about the atonement, study it out in my heart, and pray to understand it. She told me that the answers wouldn’t come fast, but promised me they would come, and when they came, they would change me forever.
And thus I started, studying, pondering and praying. The the atonement began to change me.
One of the first things that I learned was what it meant to have a remission of your sins. One day, I started reading doctrine and covenants 25, where the Lord speaks to Emma. And as I read the passages, the words touched my heart. As I read verse 3 which reads “Behold, thy sins are forgiven thee” I felt like Enos; “I knew that God could not lie; wherefore my guilt was swept away”. It was an amazing feeling, and a burden I had been carrying for weeks was lifted off of me. Later smaller pieces would help me understand deeply how to access this pure power from God, but it was this initial experience that taught me of the cleansing, sanctifying, healing power of Christ’s sacrifice.
One of the smaller pieces came through an article in the Liahona/Ensign of April 2015 called “It Isn’t a Sin to be Weak”. I recommend this article to all. Reading and pondering this article, I realized that many times I had called my weaknesses sins, and my sins weakness. But it is important to differentiate them, because, it is only then that we can use the atonement to cleanse ourselves (from sin) and strengthening ourselves (in our weaknesses) effectively. I, by this point had learned to repent, and use the cleansing part of the atonement, but I was not using effectively the strengthening part. For example, if someone has a tendency to raise their voice or use unkind words when they are mad, they most likely are used to asking forgiveness for their sins after they have yelled or done the damage. If someone is highly critical of themselves, they only ask for strength and forgiveness after the crisis or rant. And after the countless times they have asked forgiveness for their sin, they may become discouraged and stop trying to repent, knowing that even if they repent today, they will sin the same way tomorrow. But there is a better way. In the moment of sadness or anger, when we are WEAK but have not yet turned to SIN, we can turn to the Lord, and plead for his help. We can be strengthened in our weaknesses so that every time we have desires to sin, we can remember Christ’s sacrifice that he made for us, and allow him to save us before we commit sin. This helped me a lot as I learned to forgive in the moment, to stop self critical thoughts when they first came, and to fight getting angry when people rejected us in often unkind ways.
I think I learned this to a great degree when one Sunday morning, everything we tried went wrong. The members had promised to help, and then hadn’t come through (which caused feelings of betrayal a little bit), the investigators who so badly wanted and needed to come to church, were sleeping in and didn’t come (causing feelings of frustration), and I had made a lot of mistakes in the hymns I had accompanied on the piano for sacrament meeting (critical feelings towards myself). We came home for lunch and after lunch, it was time to go out and work again. I had so many bad feelings in my heart, and I did not desire to keep going and building up the kingdom of God. I asked my companion to pray before we left and the words that she said in her prayer were as inspired as they were beautiful. She thanked the Lord for his atonement, and for his sacrifice. She thanked the Lord for his love, and for his help, for the tiny miracles that we had seen that morning. She thanked him for our trials, and for our weaknesses. Then she honestly and humbly asked for help in our area, and asked that we could consecrate ourselves, giving up OUR desires and will for God’s desire and will. I remember silently crying during that whole prayer as a storm of temptation and emotion was taken out of my heart and replaced by a calm assurance of love and hope. The prayer ended and my tears had become tears of joy and gratitude that the hardest part of the plan of saving God’s children, had already been done. The spirit illuminated both of our now smiling faces.
And that was just it. The Lord was able to strengthen me in my weakness. I had started discovering the strengthening part of the atonement.
I think we could spend our lives learning about the atonement and never understand it. There are scores of books, and an increasing number of conference talks being given about this topic so simple, and so important. For this reason, Elder Holland has proclaimed “Every ordinance of the gospel focuses in one way or another on the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, and surely that is why [the sacrament] with all its symbolism and imagery comes to us more readily and more repeatedly than any other in our life . . . .and in the simple and beautiful language of the sacramental prayers those young priests offer, the principal word we hear seems to be remember.” This is my goal for the rest of my life, to always remember what Christ has done for me, and remember to use this great gift given to each and every one of God’s children. I know that Christ lives, I know that he is all powerful and all loving, and I know that his son came down to atone for the sins of all mankind so that “whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16) In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
My favorite photo of Christ.
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