When the doorbell rang and I opened my door on Sunday morning, there stood a clean-cut man in a suit. His name was Ron, and as we approached his car, he opened the door for me before going around to get in, himself … something I wasn’t used to because no one I knew had ever done anything like that for me before. I kind of liked it. Then off we drove, clear around the corner!
I sat with Ron and his family, which consisted of his wife and their baby, and afterwards, he introduced me around to several people. I was introduced to a couple of sister missionaries who looked to be around the same age as me, and was asked if I would like to take the missionary lessons. I said that I would, so we went to an empty room, and it was there that I was given the first discussion/lesson … and THIS time, I really listened to what was being said.
Unlike the handsome young elders who had distracted me in my youth, these sister missionaries were young ladies around my age, and I immediately felt comfortable around them. One had long blond hair and was called Sister Bailey, and the other had short mousy brown hair and her name was Sister Sperry. Although I grew to love both of these young ladies dearly, I couldn’t help but notice the radiance that seemed to surround Sister Sperry. She had a countenance that just radiated the pure love of Christ, especially when you looked in her eyes. They just seemed to sparkle with warmth and love.
The lesson was about a young boy named Joseph Smith, and how he had struggled to find out which church to join. He lived during a time when there were great revival meetings of every faith and denomination going on where he lived in Manchester, New York. Ministers were contending one with another and the converts were contending with each other, and this young man wondered, “How could all of this be of God?” He, like me, just wanted to find the truth, and to know which church out of all those in existence should he join.
Joseph Smith searching the Bible for answers
As I sat there, listening, tears began streaming down my cheeks. Afterwards, I then told of my own search and about the experiences I had … how I had tried to take my own life so that I could find the truth … about the voice that had prevented me from pulling the trigger — the voice that told me the answers were out there and if I didn’t give up I would eventually find them. I told them of how some unseen force had taken control of my car and had turned it off onto the exit that led me to find my apartment here. I told of my brief experience with witchcraft, and how I started praying and asking God that if His church really did exist somewhere to please guide me to it. I thought of all these things … even how I had called the ad for the Reorganized Church and got this one instead … and all of a sudden, everything made sense!
God HAD answered my prayer, finally! He had led me here! After looking all over the Los Angeles area for an apartment, He had this one saved just for me! Why else would it cost exactly the same amount of money as I had in my purse that day when most apartments were much more? And why was it located just around the block from this church? Why would some unseen force turn my car off a certain freeway exit when I had intended to go further north? With the feeling in my heart that I was experiencing then … an indescribable feeling of warmth and peace and love, as if Christ himself was sitting there and holding me in his arms … it felt like I had come back to my spiritual home! No words can describe the joy, the peace, the love that filled up my entire soul at that moment!
The sister missionaries asked if I would like to get baptized and this time, with tears in my eyes, I answered yes! To my amazement, and unlike any other church I had gone to before, they told me to go home and pray about the things I had heard today … to get on my knees and pray, asking God if the things I had learned today were true, and that He would answer my prayer. I did as they requested even though the Lord had already given me this witness in my heart as I was being taught the lesson.
As I prayed that night, I poured out my soul to God once again and asked Him if this was indeed, His church. My heart was filled with an overpowering surge of love and peace, with an intensity that I had never felt before. It was like a burning warmth within me, and I would later discover that that was the Holy Ghost bearing witness to me of the truth, just as it says in Luke 24:32 “And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened unto us the scriptures?”
I had to go through the rest of the lessons before I could get baptized, and as we met each day for the following week or so, I asked all of the questions I had previously asked of other pastors and ministers, the ones which they were unable to answer … the same questions I had asked God when I was frustrated and angry at Him. These humble sisters were able to answer every single one of those questions for me. If there was one they didn’t know the answer to, they would find out for me, but they were always able to give me an answer that made sense. Ron also was a big help in answering many of my questions.
And one by one, the missing pieces of the puzzle all seemed to fall into place and fit in perfectly. Everything began to make sense as I began to learn the true nature of God and Jesus Christ; where our spirits existed before we were born, why we are here upon this earth, and what really happens after we die. That was the icing on the cake and I knew without a doubt in my heart, that God had indeed, heard and answered my prayers! The coincidences were just too many to be just that, a coincidence!