I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I believe in God as he has been represented by his Prophets. My parents are not religious and neither is my sister. I wasn't born in any church and before I joined, I was an aetheist. Didn't believe in a God. I believed in Karma and doing good but no all powerful being. I had been to church groups, youth activities and scriptual study in Christian churches over my whole life but there was nothing there, no spirit, no feeling of anything more to life then this is it. You are born and you die.
My ex-girlfriend, girlfriend at the time, was the one that got me to think for myself and to ask questions about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She had just come back from a Temple trip, and she had bought me a Book of Mormon. Inside the cover she had placed a letter where she had written her testimony of the gospel. This is what prompted me to find out. I received a feeling that I had to find out that somehow what she was saying was true but that can't be possible she believes in a God I've never seen any signs that point to an existance of a God! The big bang and evolution was good enough for me, also being a scientist helped in that area.
Her testimony really hit me so I had to find out for myself, I borrowed a Gospel Principles manual from a mutual friend of ours and proceeded to read it. Now this thing made sense to me, it explained the origin of the soul, how there were requirements to get into heaven not just believe in Jesus and you'll be saved, and most important that God created a Heaven and an Earth because he was our literal father. The love a father has for his son I could understand, a love a supreme glowing cloud of a being had for bits of mud he put together made no sense.
After that I started having meetings with the missionaries. Oh my ex didn't know anything about my investigating the church until this point. I knew pretty quickly which missionary was going to baptise me. Over the course of the meetings (they went pretty quickly since I knew alot of the answers already from the Gospel Principles) I was asked to go home and pray about the truth of the Book of Mormon. I had never prayed by myself before, the thought of it didn't even enter in my mind. So that night I knelt beside my bed and asked, I had never had such an out pouring of spirit and love before. The burning of the bosom it does really happen to some people. I still didn't know when I was to be baptised so I kept putting it off, even though I knew which church I was going to be baptised into, the existance of God, and who was going to Baptise me. The timing just wasn't set, and I knew why later.
On the 26th of October 2002 at 17 years of age, I went with some Christian friends to a rock concert in Brisbane (I say Christian friends because they were from a different church). I felt no spirit during this concert but then an evangelist from America gave a talk. He was very amusing, but I still felt no real spirit. At the end of his talk he asked, who is willing to stand up and be counted as Christian and a witness of God? It was at that point that the spirit just leapt into me. I was never one to be a part of the crowd, and I was shy. At that point I feel the burning desire and knowledge that God lived, that he was looking at me, that he loved me and that he wanted me to stand up and be counted. More importantly I wanted to stand up and be counted. So I turned to my two friends that had brought me to the concert and said "Are you coming with me or not?"
This was a Saturday night, the next day (Sunday) I went to the missionaries and organised the Saturday for my Baptism. I was baptised on the 2nd of November 2002, the missionary that I knew would baptise me moved into a new area on the Wednesday after. I was confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on the 10th of November went through the Temple on the 19th and turned 18 on the 22nd.
I know that God and Jesus Christ are two seperate people that both love me. I have witnessed their love and seen their work in this world. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is a place where we can try to be better people and perfect ourselves. Nobody in the church is perfect, nobody on Earth is perfect. May we all be better people tommorow then we were today. This I whole heartedly hope.
-Rezzard