November 1963....this 5 year old boy was sitting on the living room floor, his mother ironing behind him, as the TV broadcast the news that JFK has just been shot.........Mom starts to cry (I, however, am calm.....he WAS a democrat, after all !!) and noticing this, I ask her if he is going to die? I dont know yet, we will wait and see. ( or something to that effect ). What happens if he dies? Do I have to die? she mentions nothing about heaven when we die -- only tells me that all of us have to die at some point......I ask her : why? She makes no attempt to answer this. [ Mom really was not able to address these issues --- we were lukewarm Catholics, at best, though in later years I urged our parents to start taking us to Mass regularly, but that went nowhere ] This brief conversation with our beautiful mother serves as the beginning of me pondering the question : if I have to die, what becomes of me then? and these questions led to an even deeper question : why do I exist? what is the purpose for being alive? Well, intermittently and yet frequently, for three years, these questions, especially the last two, presented themselves to my mind......now, what I am about to describe is very real.......and it proves one eternal reality......that whenever one of Fathers spirit children spends a lot of time meditating, pondering on spiritual things, eventually that child is going to have a revelation from our Father in Heaven......and so it was with me. at 8, I was sitting quietly in the house, again meditating on why do I even exist? when a distinctive voice came into my mind, and a spiritual impression enveloped me, and it was communicated to me that I existed before I was born in this body. Thats it. I was not told in what form I existed -- only that I did. It would be 12 more years before additional revelation would come giving clarity to my heavenly communication. Then at 10, my 5th grade teacher (who would be in the audience 13 years later when I gave a sermon in sacrament meeting as a returned missionary) emphasized to us that when Columbus, Cortez and Pizarro discovered the New World, in each case the Indians they discovered received them in worshipful adoration, and treated them as the expected return of a great white bearded God. I can still remember feeling something strange when this news hit my ears. I was fascinated by this. I thought : there has GOT to be something to this ! This did not happen in all three cases by accident.....there is some good reason behind this, I just was not aware what that reason was. In the next 12 years there were many people I ran into that knew, and could have told me, but not a single person did. Then, that same teacher told us the story of how a guy named Brigham Young and 147 followers traveled out of what was then America to a desert out west. and again, a strange curiosity about this group filled my mind. I wanted to know more, but that was all she told us. Then, at 14, as we were driving past a cemetery adjacent to my high school, my Dad told me that two years before I was born, mom had a boy that lived for an hour, and that he was in that cemetery. Knowing something of Catholic doctrine about infant baptism, I asked if Maurice had been baptized (no). Then the processing began. For 30 minutes, I pondered the doctrinal implications. And in 30 minutes, I went from being a striving Catholic to being an atheist. I could not, no -- I would not -- accept a God that could send an innocent baby to purgatory, who had done nothing wrong, except fail to be baptized, which he had no control over. A God of love and fairness would not do this to anyone, especially a baby.....and if the true church taught this (I had assumed that numbers equated to authenticity in my naivete), then my reasoning skills led me to conclude that my church, and all the protestant churches that had branched out -- broken away from Catholicism over the centuries -- were merely man made churches, and that God did not exist. Then, about 3 months later, my oldest brother gary (18), whom I nearly worshipped as my hero, owing to his being the star linebacker at this football powerhouse high school (and to my knowledge, the only guy ever unanimously selected as a 1st team ALL-CIF player without ever having played a single down in CIF playoffs due to getting shot the week before), and owing to his thumping of john (a brother three years older than me) for Johns unrighteous dominion over me, (and because he had the prettiest cheerleader as his girlfriend)......well, when Gary was shot, I was forced to confront my atheism. Privately, for the first time in my life, I prayed to a God that I did not know existed, that He would save Gary, for Gary was too important to me to lose him.....well Gary lived ! Then, at 17, as I was driving my Shelby GT-500 to see Lori (in Quartz Hill), I passed a building near the local JC. On the building was the name : The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints -- a name I had never heard before. Almost like it was on perpetual re-run in my head, that name just had a nice ring to it, and I could not get it out of my consciousness -- for about 90 minutes -- even after i was with Lori. A phenomenon I had never before experienced about any other church. Then, at 18, after having been the manager of a music store for several months (and having money, a Shelby, a great job and other perks), despite all this, I was restless. There was something missing -- clearly, but I just could not put a name to it! For a full 2 months in the fall of 76, I determined to go home every night, seclude myself, and for the 2nd time in my life, pray to a God that I was fairly certain did not exist. And for a full two months, I would get home, and something (or someone) would distract me from my avowed purpose, and I would not pray. But growing frustrated at my failure to carry through, I finally did it. I told God that IF he did exist, he was going to have to make himself manifest to me in an undeniable fashion......AND, IF there was a true doctrine of his, He would have to reveal it to me, similarly, in an undeniable fashion -- for I was on-guard against whipping myself up into a religious frenzy....that I was not about to become a believer without REALLY concrete evidence, evidence that I would know did not originate from within me! About two weeks later, a weird phenomenon started occurring with regularity. It seemed every time -- for about two weeks -- I went to buy lunch for myself and the store owner, I would see these really bad New York Life insurance salesmen....sooooo bad were they, that they could not even afford a car ! They were on bikes, in 100+ degree heat, wearing white shirts, dark slacks, ties, and sunglasses. At one stop light, I attempted to speak with them, but the light went green. Then about two weeks after I last saw them, they came into the store to buy hard rock music. I noticed their name tags, both of which had said Elder. [and I had not yet made the connection between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the Mormon church and Brigham Young and his followers going west].......I asked them how it is that they have the same first name? They explained. Then I asked them what do you do? They said they go around teaching people about how the church got started. But did not ask me if I wanted to know more [ I think it was the long hair and beard ]. They then paid me and left.....and yet, I had prayed them into my store ! Then, in 1977, we opened up a 2nd store in Palmdale. A big advertizment of our grand opening, with my picture and the owners picture, was put in the local newspaper. On our grand opening, a beautiful couple came in to buy....he a very muscular guy, she (carrie) a gorgeous blonde. Then two days later, the blonde (a devoted Latter Day Saint) came back without the boyfriend, and stayed, talking with me for about an hour, in between customers. She kept coming back thereafter, virtually every day, staying for anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes, for better than a year. I was not asking any women out at the time, owing to Janie (another attractive blonde) and how that ended.....so, Carrie, growing impatient, and needing an escort for the Homecoming Queen contest at the Junior College football game one saturday night, asked me to be her escort-date....and hence we started casually dating. About 6 months in, I was balancing the books, and coming up short, and took the Lords name in vain (a rarity, even then). She gently asked me why do you have to talk that way? [ I knew that she was trying to groom me to be her future husband, but first had to convert me to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ] I sd : Carrie, I really like you, and that you come in here to hang around, but you need to know that I am NEVER going to be a Mormon, OK? As far as I am concerned, ALL churches are man-made, and their main goal is to get your money.....and I wont see you again if you ever bring up religion again, ok ? ( organized religion should not have been such a stumbling-block for me, because the universe is very very organized, as is the human body, but all that was obscured by the unfairness of purgatory for un baptized infants, which was REPUGNANT to me) Well, about 3 months later, knowing that it would be the last time she would ever see me, she courageously said, I know the Mormon church is true . By now, I had fallen in love with her.....but something inside me also told me not to discount her words. I still had this wall up against organized religion, and I still knew nothing of her church. She then took me for my 20th birthday to dinner in LA, followed by a visit to the Visitors Center at the LA Temple (which I only agreed to because of how I rebuffed her earlier....but Gods whole reason for bringing her into my life lay inside that Visitors Center, as will soon become apparent). At that time, there were two, side-by-side mannequin displays : (A) one with Christ amongst the Jews in Israel, saying : other sheep I have, which are not of this fold ; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd... JOHN 10:16 ; and (B) Christ amongst the Nephites/Lamanites in the New World, after His resurrection (34 AD), saying to them : and ye are they, of whom I said, other sheep I have which are not of this fold... (3rd Nephi 15 in Book of Mormon) Immediately my mind recalled what my 5th grade teacher taught us -- that in all three Spanish explorer cases, the Indians they discovered had a legend that their forefathers had been visited by this great white bearded God......and something inside told me that this mannequin display before my eyes was indeed the very reason the Indians had the common legend ! That it WAS Jesus that visited those forefathers of the Aztecs and Mayans. I mentioned none of this to Carrie as we drove home. I still had this problem with organized religion, and I had no intention of changing. Two weeks later two Elders knocked on my door, asking if they could talk with me. I politely told them I was not interested, and before i could close the door fully, I started to tremble inside. It was as if I was being warned about rejecting these Elders and their message. I stopped just short, paused, and said OK, but not here at my Dads place....is there somewhere else we can meet? the next day we met at a local church. They showed me an artist rendering of the Father and the Son standing in the air above a young man, and told me the story of Joseph Smith being told by Christ that he was to join none of the churches, for they were all wrong...they teach for doctrines the commandments of men...... [Well, that deeply resonated within me !! I already knew that....on my own intellectual and reasoning abilities I KNEW that to be true]. They asked me what I thought of that. I told them I could totally believe this was possible, perhaps even real, for I too, had concluded at 14 that the churches were all man made. They asked me right then to be baptized into the church. And I politely said, uh, lets not go so fast here. I need to know a lot more before I do anything like getting baptized ! The next day they taught me that Joseph Smith had it revealed to him that all mankind lived with Heavenly Father as spirits before this earth was organized, and showed me Jeremiah 1:5, and asked me what I thought of this doctrine. [ again, this resonated deeply, as I remembered being told at 8 that I existed in some form before being born in this body ] I told them about my revelation at 8, and that I could believe this doctrine of the pre-mortal life. They then asked me again if I would be baptized. I was now giving it some thought. But there was the KING stumbling-block to my being in any church -- purgatory, or hell, for un baptized babies.....and on this hinged whether I would be baptized or not. And I told them so ! So, I asked them : do un-baptized babies go to purgatory, or hell? (I was sooooo hoping they would say yes so I would not have to change). Elder Milne looked at Elder Kapp, smiled at me, and opened up to Moroni chapter 8, and had me read verses 10-12. Upon reading this, I was sooooo relieved that God is NOT the unfair, unjust Father that would send innocent babies to purgatory, that I would have been baptized, even if there were pastors getting salaries ! THAT is how much I was gratified to learn the truth about this matter. I was baptized 10 days later (8-26-78). A week later, Carrie and I were engaged. But a month later, I was asked to go on split-offs with the Elders, and had such a wonderful experience, that after dropping the Elder off, as I was driving home I had a very strong impression come over me that I could not get married just yet -- that I had been fore-ordained to go on a mission, and that had to come first. I asked Carrie if she would wait for me. At first the answer was yes, but 6 weeks later she gave my ring back, and 10 months later she married a recently returned Elder in the Temple. Two months later (14 months after baptism), I was on that fore-ordained mission, which has never ceased. LikeLike ·
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 16:12:14 +0000
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