Why I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Subtitles:

Hey, YouTube. This isn't my primary channel. I don't know how you found me, but I'm glad you did. Just bear with my rambling here for the next probably 10 or 15 minutes. I guess you'll know when the time comes to watch this video, but I don't really know how long it's going to take because I'm trying to not to go with a lot of notes.

I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You may know us as Mormons. We have kind of moved away from that name because it implies we're followers of Mormon, not followers of Christ because we're Christians.

So you may hear us talk about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or you may hear people talk to us or refer to us as Mormons. That's what we are. I'm a convert to the church and it's kind of a long story how I got there. So here we go. In preschool and kindergarten, I went to a private Christian elementary school. It was all right. It was kind of cool.

I remember singing all these songs and we had cots and recess and fun times, and we would go and do sermons and do service projects at the nursing home behind it and all that, fun stuff. Halfway through kindergarten, some kind of weird things happened there so my parents moved me into the local elementary school.

In that elementary class, I had a friend that attended a Lutheran church. So my mother and I, at some point, I don't know, probably third or fourth grade started going there. My dad would come sometimes, but mostly it was just my mom. She played the bells in the choir and I went to all their activities and weekend activities and summer activities.

And at some point, we stopped going there. And then a couple years later, my father was diagnosed with cancer. At this point in his life, he had been a state police officer for I'd say about 17 years and he was in his forties. So he had seen all kinds of things in the world.

And as he started to face his own mortality and realize that there was a pretty good chance he was going to be dead, he wanted to find religion. So in the town I grew up in, there was a bunch of churches, small town, tons of churches. We went to my uncle's church, which was, as my parents would call them, Pentecostal holy rollers.

Everyone has their beliefs, some beliefs are different. Who am I to judge? But the faith healing and the speaking in tongues and the randomly in the isles just didn't sit well with my father. He saw them as con artists and confidence men or whatever. So we kept looking at churches and eventually, we went to a United Methodist church that was two blocks from our house.

He was happy with the three pastors there and really liked things. So we started going there. And in the United Methodist church, there's confirmation, which is when the children formally join the church. I was probably 11, 12 years old as we were going through this program.

And you have the pastor in there had these booklets that described different religions. So we were exposed to Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and then Catholicism and other Christian denominations. As part of this, we also went to local congregations near us. We went and talked to the father at the local Catholic church, which was another block away.

We drove 15, 20 minutes to the Plainfield Islamic center and we learned a little about Islam. We just talked about all these differences and then compared them to the United Methodist church's teachings. And there was something just about all of these people. You have a million people in this faith and a billion people in this faith.

And they all believe that something greater than them created everything and that something greater than them cares about them. And as a science fiction fan, even at that age, it just, it amused me because it implied that everything wasn't an accident, that countless stars hadn't come and gone before our star to create the heavy metals and just other isotopes and elements that are needed to create our star and then to create our planets around that star.

And that life didn't just happen as two random chemicals coming together and creating a protein. And then that protein somehow evolved into life and that life evolved into multicellular life. And then that multicellular life developed intelligence. And ultimately, you have humans. And I liked that it wasn't an accident.

There's septillions of stars and space is an incredibly cold and lonely place. And it was nice to think that we existed because something wanted us to, someone or several someones. Because you have Polytheism and Monotheism, and you have concepts in Buddhism that kind of relate to these things. And it was just neat.

So chugging along, liking this church, going to all the programs. Then my father dies of cancer 12 days before my 13th birthday, oddly enough, on March 11th. It was kind of weird. I didn't understand this. I watched him die literally right in front of me in a room full of crying police officers that are supposed to be these stone-faced serious people.

And it didn't sit well with me. Why would a supreme being just snuff out a consciousness? Why would it take it from its loved ones and from its life and from everything it was doing?

I had no experience for death aside from my gerbil, Geronimo dying, and then another dog of ours running away. This was the only real loss in my life up to this point. I had seen a dead body or two at a funeral parlor, but it wasn't someone I knew, it was just some random person. And I didn't know how to process that.

Especially as a teenager, when you're already in a weird place, because things are changing and you're starting to get this big sense of self and you are the authority in your life and you want it your way and you think you're cool and you can make your own decisions. And then just someone dies and you're, "Why would you do that?"

So a couple months later, I go to this week-long outreach ministry. I believe it was in Tennessee. It's called Mountain T.O.P. It still exists as of earlier this year. And in it, it's basically a vacation Bible camp, except during the day you go out and do service.

We built a shed for a family. And it was supposed to be a shed, but it was very clear that their kids were going to live in it. And we built a deck and we processed a couple acres of overgrown lawn for an elderly woman. And just stuff like that. This is a really economically depressed area.

And you just go and you show them that you're willing to do work for them. This was the first time I had ever been away from my family. And it's in June and my father died in March. And the school ended.

And then the next day, or that weekend, we went off to this thing. And I made my mom come and get me before the week was up because I had all these emotions just going through me and I was mad at God, why would he do this? And that's the point where I turned my back on religion.

A couple years earlier in 1995 or 1996, the movie, The Craft came out. It's about four high school-aged women. They are witches. It's an okay movie. And it's just been rebooted with a younger cast. So it's something that had some sort of cultural impact that it's still around. And the internet was this useful tool at the time, but it was nowhere like it is today.

And search engines were nothing like Google, but we managed to find, my friend and I that watched this movie, these web rings and online book of shadows and all this stuff doing Gardnerian Wicca. And there were authors like Silver RavenWolf that had spells like, "Owie fix, owie fix. You're the fairy that I pick. Bring the healing, come right quick."

That's supposed to magically heal you. And as a teenager, and you'd seen this in this movie with these four attractive women and they were cool and they had all these cool powers. You think that this stuff might be real and you can read one of these books or these websites and do this stuff.

And that kind of got me and my friend who was a Quaker at the time back into looking at other religious beliefs. And we started looking at all these pagan and neo-pagan and reconstructionist pagan beliefs that were loosely based on Celtic and Norse and even Greco-Roman deities.

And that was kind of cool. And it got me thinking about stuff again. And we looked at some of the Druid organizations that existed at the time and still do like ADF and OBOD, The Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids. And they had some literature you could get through mail order and stuff.

And it made us start thinking about if there was something greater than us or some external force that actually had some sort of coherent control over reality. And we kind of messed around with that for a couple of years in high school. And then I was about 15, we started going to lots of punk shows and local rock shows.

We had a couple good venues here in town that were pretty much where we ended up every weekend. And before I could drive a car legally, I was drinking and using recreational drugs like marijuana and LSD and we were robo-tripping. I don't know if that's still a thing, but we would get the Robitussin, the right one and drink it and get a little loopy from it.

Because it's got an alcohol content and the drugs would kind of alter your perception a little. And that just kind of became our life for a few years, mine, especially and some of my newer friends. And I didn't really think about religion much while we were doing all of that.

And then I found this group called Joy of Satan done by this woman who uses an alias called Maxine Dietrich. Turns out, it's a neo-Nazi movement. Didn't know that actually until this year. I kind of had suspicions, but I was thinking about my religious history and wanted to look things up and wanted to see if they were still around and they are.

And I saw all of these things linking them to a prominent leader in a neo-Nazi group. So right off the bat, it's not the greatest, greatest group. What they taught was somewhat parallel to what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches. It taught that there was a premortal existence where groups in heaven were watching man as Adam and Eve interact on the earth.

And they saw that it, per their story. This is not a teaching of the church, this is purely of this entity of the adversary. That there was this war in heaven that started to form out because Lucifer, who they say is the brother of Jesus and the son of God wanted to make men their equals while God and Jesus wanted to keep men suppressed and have him subservient.

If you're familiar with Islam, you'll also see this with the jinn. The jinn were supposed to worship Adam and Eve. They were this little weekend subclass and then there's a whole mythos there. But with the joy of Satan, they taught that. And if you worshiped Satan, he would help you and he gave us knowledge, and...

So I started looking into this. And I was already not in the greatest of places and then this stuff. And life got kind of lame. It got kind of crappy. It was interesting. It was not good. So I had this at least exposure to some sort of premortal existence, which you don't really get in other Christian denominations, or even in other religions.

You kind of get it with reincarnation, but it's not really comparable. So I got away from that and I started looking back at Christian denominations again. And none of them really felt right, but then I discovered Islam again. I vaguely remembered it as a child. And I went back to it at, I don't know, 18, 19 years old and something stood out there.

There's, we have all of these prophets in the Old Testament and we have Jesus in the New Testament and they're receiving revelation from God. And then it just stops. Well, Islam taught that the prophet Muhammad was a prophet of God and started receiving revelation again hundreds of years after Jesus passed away, after he was crucified for our sins.

And that was interesting. And the fact that there was over a billion Muslims in the world and probably hundreds of millions of them are devout and pray multiple times a day, that really got my interest. And there's a lot of science in the Quran if you kind of read between the lines. And it's stuff that we didn't really know until more modern times.

So you see some sort of thing there that kind of calls to you and you go to it and you read it. And I was mesmerized by it and interested in it. So I started going to local masjids or mosques. And I met with this guy and he showed me how to do the prayer and everything.

And I started going, not every day, but several times a week. Usually on the weekends, I'd go and I'd hang out and I'd talk to the guys. And there's people like Yusuf Islam that are semi-famous and all of these... There was tons of Muslim podcast content at the time, which didn't really exist for Christians.

Because with a lot of Christian denominations, you've got small churches that are mostly independent or they're loosely affiliated with a larger group. But with Islam it was like these guys, these Imams, they got a lot of time on their hands.

So they would create all this content. And I would just listen to these lectures and lectures and over and over and over. And I did that for several months and then something. I wanted it to be something, but it never felt right. So I go back to looking at religion and I was familiar with Buddhism. I had dabbled with it on and off.

I think by that point, Richard Gere already had a couple of Buddhist books out, because he is friends with the Dalai Lama or whatever. And the Dalai Lama had several books out. And it just seemed kind of strange. You'd have to go through all of these lives and continue to refine yourself over and over and over until you could progress into something else.

And that just didn't... If a universe was created by something grander, it just doesn't seem like that would be the solution. So I skipped that. And then one day I'm reading a bunch of Jules Verne books from Project Gutenberg. There, you can get free books that are out of copyright protection or whatever, trademark protection, copyright, I think.

And I'm reading them and I'm reading all of the translated works of Jules Verne. And I get to Around the World in Eighty Days and there's a chapter where Passepartout is on a train and it's going through Salt Lake City if I remember correctly.

And I believe it's at the beginning of the chapter, it explains that Elders so and so, and so and so of the Church of Jesus Christ are going to be giving a lecture on Mormonism in the dinner car or something at a specific time. And I was like, "Oh yeah, I remember seeing commercials for those on TV in the nineties." And in the town I grew up in a lot of people had stickers on their doors that said, "No Mormons or Jehovah witnesses please."

And in fact, the house I was living at the time from the previous owner had one of those stickers on the storm door. Because it was a small town, so you'd get a lot of people coming door to door, which was used heavily by the Mormon church and the... well, it was used by a lot of people.

We even had Baptists come to our door. But it's a primary tactic at the time for the Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to go door to door and that's how they'd expose themselves to people. And so I was like, that's curious. And I went to the website.

It was way different than it is today because this is oh, probably late 2003, early 2004. And I saw you could request a free Book of Mormon. So I did. Weeks go by, nothing comes. So I requested another one. More weeks go by, nothing comes. I think I requested one a third time, and same thing. So having been on the internet at this point for a decade, basically, just a little less than a decade, I was pretty savvy.

So I found LDSchat.com. I think it still exists. It did a few months ago. And I'm in this chat room and I'm, "How do I get one of those free Books of Mormon?" And someone pops into the room and they go... Well, first they ask me where I live and I'm, "I'm in Indianapolis." And they go, "Oh, so am I. My sister and brother and I are going to this thing called Institute tonight."

What's Institute? That sounds kind of weird. Is that kind of Scientology-ish with their Sea study Institute or whatever it's called. And I'm like ehhuhehh. But she describes what it is. And I'm, "Oh, so it's just Bible study. Cool." And she goes, "Well, it starts in an hour and a half or two hours or whatever. Do you want to meet us over there?"

And I'm, "Maybe. What's the address?" MapQuest.com. And I put in the address and it's literally right down the road. I had to drive two blocks, go straight, turn right and I was basically there. So sure, I'll go.

And I meet them. And just sitting in, in the Institute class, I don't remember anything that was talked about specifically, but I remember thinking, huh, this is interesting. Because I had read that they had restored prophets that started with Joseph Smith. And that really spoke to me because why would God just stop talking to people?

Why would he be so involved in this group of people's lives and then just stop? So they had my interest already. And then I learned there's the Book of Mormon, but then there's Doctrine and Covenants and then there's the Pearl of Great Price.

There's these scriptures that are a mix of several groups of people in Israel and then the ancient Americas somewhere. We don't know specifically where, and it's not worth guessing because it doesn't matter. And then more modern scripture through revelation with Doctrine and Covenants that was given to us in the early restored church in the 1800s.

And it's like, yes, this makes sense. So I hang out with these people and I say, "Yeah, I'll come back the next week." Then they started doing the missionary discussions at their house. And I knew it wouldn't go over well at home. I'd have to, my mother would be, "What is this? blahblahblah"

And I'm like, I don't want to deal with that. And I'm like, "Well, can I do these talks at your guys' house?" And they were, "Sure." I'm like, "Well, that's kind of weird. Is this a cult?" And they had a school bus in their backyard. So we did the talks in the school bus in their backyard.

And I met with elder Burdick and elder Nielsen. And we did the talks. And some people take months or even years to get through the talks. And I was like, "Can I see you guys tomorrow? Can I see you guys in three days? When can I see you again?

I want to get through these things." And they're drawing their little bridge diagram and showing me how Jesus bridges the gap that saves us. And they're telling me all these things and iron rod and Book of Mormon and Nephi, Lehi and Moroni I'm like, "Cool, sign me up. I want to get baptized."

And they're like, "Really?" And I'm like, "Yeah, this sounds true. It sounds like it's the thing." If you've ever watched Starship Troopers, would you like to know more? Yes, I would like to know more. Tell me everything. Let me in.

So I get baptized. I'm baptized on a Saturday. Sunday, I get confirmed. And then Monday, ring, ring, ring, ring. And I'm like, I get out my razor V3 and I open it up and it's blue and I'm, "Hello?" And they're, "Hi, I'm a missionary from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Have you had a chance to look at the Book of Mormon we sent you?" And I'm, "Oh, I never got one." But funny story, I was just baptized Saturday. And I don't know what that was about. And this is pure speculation, but I think if I would've got a Book of Mormon in the mail, I would've briefly looked at it because it's just a paper book.

This is a triple here, but same kind of concept. The Book of Mormon with missionaries uses just a flimsy blue one and I would've looked at it and have been like, "Oh. Yeah, what is this, golden plates? Ha. Yeah. No." And I've thrown it away. But because I had to go for it and I had to find people and I was exposed to that Institute class, I think that's why I joined the church.

I think if I would've got the Book of Mormon when it happened, so I think the call was just a little nod at me saying, "Hey." But that's how I joined the church. And then fairly quickly, which unfortunately happens with a lot of converts, it's overwhelming.

And there's all of these things and you don't know anything and meet people like my wife who served a mission and her family has held all of these callings pretty much in everything. And they've grown up in it their whole life.

And they forget that these terms are wholly unique often to the church. And you just get overwhelmed and you don't know what anyone's talking about. And there's not really a good resource. There's a very dated book, but I didn't know it existed at the time that just goes through and tells you what all these things are.

But now you can go on the website and it's a lot better. So what happened? I just became inactive and then years went by. And I still knew it was probably the truth and everything and it just kind of sat there in the back of my mind. And I went about with my life, I got involved in a nightclub and the owner and we got up to all kinds of shenanigans and craziness.

And I almost died. I had a hypokalemic event that got my potassium so low. I was able to move my hands about this much and I was paralyzed. And fortunately, I was living with my mother at the time. And as I laid on the floor, I managed to sit up enough in the bed that I rolled out onto the floor and I'm laying like this and like a half ripped pretzel and I'm shouting for help.

And I can't move. And I'm panicky and realized I was kind of going down that bad path again. I was going out and getting drunk every night and I was drinking a fifth which is an obscene amount of alcohol. And I was doing that nightly for a long time. And I'm laying there on the floor paralyzed. And I'm like, "If you get me up off of this floor, I will change my life."

Of course, I didn't. I got up off the floor with the help of several EMTs and firefighters and got treated in the hospital. And but I did start to shift away from the club scene and my friend Ravi at the time.

I told him I couldn't be a part of his life anymore and started thinking about religion again. There weren't really any good church-related podcasts at the time, but I was already a big podcast listener. But I started looking at the churches monthly magazines again. And then a few years went by and I started going to church again.

I was now 30, 29, 30. And it wasn't so awkward being this convert like I was when I was 20 and I got thrown in with a bunch of other young adults that had grown up in the church and had either just served missions or were just going to serve missions in the near future. And I was able to just be the wallflower. Then I start going to my ward again and I'm hanging out and I'm like, okay.

So I'm going to these mid-singles firesides, which involved three stakes, a stake is kind of the equivalent of a state. And then a ward is kind of like your town. So you go to a ward, but then several wards make up a stake. And for mid-singles out here in Indiana, there's not a whole lot of us.

So three stakes that probably had, I don't know, 30-ish, 25 to 30-ish wards meeting would have 20 people show up that were single and in the mid-single ages. And at one of these, there were three stake patriarchs, which it's a calling in the church.

And you can go to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints website, and just type in patriarch or patriarchal blessing and you can kind of get an idea of what they do. And they were talking about the importance of your patriarchal blessing, which is a little bit of a revelation. Some will say it's just a cold reading.

And I entirely went into it thinking, just adamant that I was going to be asked a bunch of questions and then it was going to be a cold reading. And then they would tell me what I wanted to hear. And I even got the paper back after he told me things and I had the impression while he was saying it, when patriarch Hammond was saying these things, I'm like, "Oh, you got this from what you told me. This is baloney."

And then I got the paper in the mail. They mail you a transcript. They record it so you can have it to look back at over your life. I sought the same thing, but it's basically these are the things that if you live a good life and you do what you're supposed to do in the church and accept your callings, these are the things that are probably going to happen to you in your life.

And I'm like, "Yeah. Right." He made all kinds of promises and I'm like pfffhah!. Well, one of them was this crazy idea that I would marry one of Heavenly Father's young daughters. And she would be my wife. And I'm like, "Oh, you're full of it." These people that show up to the mid-singles are all divorced and have a bunch of kids and I have nothing in common with them.

And well, my wife's right here off a camera and she was a member of the Church that served a mission. So when this thing happened on my patriarchal blessing, I was like, these things are crazy, but part of me was, just take the church seriously. So I moved into this new ward. I got the patriarchal blessing within a week, either before or after moving into the ward.

And when I moved into the ward, I don't like change. So I'm into this ward and the very first day I'm there, this guy is telling this story in the elders quorum meeting, which is the men's group meeting. And he tells me, well, he tells everyone there. He says, "Well, then brother so and so wasn't feeling so good. So me and brother Lloyd." And my ears perk up because the Lloyds are who I did my discussions in their backyard.

And he's like, "Brother Lloyd and I, we wanted to let this brother go fishing. So we made a little pond in brother Lloyd's garage and stocked it with some fish so he could come over, sit in his wheelchair and fish." And I'm just like, that's such a weird story. And then I go up to him after and I go, this brother Lloyd, did he have two daughters and a son? Yeah. Did he live off of Lynnhurst over at such and such?

And he goes, "Yeah." And I go, "I did my discussions in his backyard in a bus." And to me, this was God saying, you are home. This is the right place. Here's this thing. What are the chances of that? I meet this girl in a chat room. She happens to live down the road from me and she's going to a meeting that afternoon.

I go to the meeting and then years later, when I'm just dipping my toes back in the water of the church, I move to a new ward. I move a city. And then bam, here's a person that is telling a story about that family. So then I start taking things a little bit more seriously. I get the priesthood. I accept a calling.

I get my endowment so I can go to the temple. And then I install the Mutual dating app, which is the Tinder of members of the Church. And I'm swiping and swiping. And this girl matches me in another state. And I'm like, yeah whatever. And we start talking. And then a year and a half-ish later, we're married. And that was at the beginning of this year.

And it's never easy being a member of the church because there's lots of things asked of you and we're supposed to help people. And you don't always want to do it. And then you have your normal obstacles and hurdles too. My wife and I scheduled our wedding in the temple December of last year for May of this year. And it's 2020 when I'm recording last.

So the temple's close and we can't get married. So instead of getting sealed in the temple in May, we have to get married in the church meeting house parking lot with just her parents and just my mother and a random Fox that trots by that, I'm the only one that saw. And I swear there was a fox.

If I've told you this story, there was really a fox. I promise there was a fox. No one saw it. I saw it. It was cool. Foxes are creepy, but it was cool. I digress. So we had to do that. And then we lost three temple sealing dates and COVID ravaged the lands and et cetera, et cetera. Whatever survivors of COVID are viewing this in the distant future, I was there.

I was there when the toilet paper vanished and everything. But we finally got sealed. It took month after month after month. And then finally, in towards the end of November, we were able to get sealed. And then of craziest things, I was called to give a talk at stake conference, which is a church meeting that replaces the normal church meetings that involves every ward in a stake.

So could be hundreds, could be thousands of people depending on your geographical location and the population density of members of the church. And I gave a much shorter version of this talk there.

And if you had told me before I joined the Church or even when I first joined the church, that I would be married to a member of the church, that I would be sealed in the temple, that I would speak at stake conference, that I would accept a calling in the Church because I like my free time, that I would be sitting in my living room, in a house I bought with my wife. Two things I never thought would happen.

And I'd be talking to the internet, rambling incessantly to the internet about how I became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I would've told you were crazy. But I believe that the church is true. It makes sense to me that we would have ongoing revelation, that we would have living prophets.

If God's going to create an entire universe, which is truly unfathomably large. Even our solar system is so impossibly large, our planet is so incredibly large. You could spend your whole life traveling the planet and never set foot everywhere. For all of that to exist there has to be a supreme being.

And I don't think he would just abandon us. I don't think you would be involved in our lives and then just be like, "All right, guys. I'm out." And go take a coffee break or whatever. So I'm a Mormon. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I'm bearded, I'm tattooed, I'm an alcoholic in recovery.

I've done drugs. I've done a laundry list of drugs, but God loves me, and he loves you. I don't know who's watching this. I don't know anything about you, but I can guarantee you that God loves you. I would hope if you're a member of the church, this reminds you of the covenants you've made.

That it reminds you that if there's a convert in your ward, they may not know everything and they might have a different experience than you. And don't be afraid to go up and say hi, or to be their friend. Or if they're your ministering assignment, to reach out to them. Because they might drift away like I did.

And it might be a decade until they come back or they might never come back. And that's just unfortunate. And if you're not a member of the church and you're waiting for this video to end so you can type, "Oh, you're in a cult" down in the comments because you're an anti-Mormon or something, then I can't stop you from doing that.

But I would hope you would actually listen to what I'm saying and reevaluate what you've been told or what you feel or what you think. And just subjectively look at the material the church has and look at other religions and try to find what makes sense for you. And I think it's our church and maybe you will too.

And maybe you're an investigator and you think the church is true, but you're just looking for a little more information. There's all kinds of stuff out there. Talk to the missionaries. If you're a man, ask to speak to the elders' quorum president. If you're a woman, ask to speak to the relief society president. If you're a teen, ask if you can talk to some of the teens in your ward or whatever. If you're divorced, that's okay.

There's lots of divorced people in the church that have converted in or due to unfortunate circumstances, find them that way. There's alcoholics in the church. There's people that struggle with drug addiction. There's people that have probably killed people in self-defense or in manslaughter or whatever. Whoever you are, whatever you are, there's a place for you here.

Just do what you have to do. Learn about us. Think about us. Reach out on the comments. I'll try to pay attention to these in perpetuity. Or just find me on social media. I'm Ryan Mercer on Instagram. I'm on Twitter. I'm easy to find on Twitter. There'll be links down below. Look for my ugly mug on Facebook. Send me a message. If it pops up, I'll read it and try to respond as quickly as I can.

But that's why I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I've probably rambled a really long time here. And I did have a quote here. And in the April 1925 general conference, which is our church-wide meeting that's held twice a year where we have talks from the leaders of the church and sometimes receive revelation in an instruction.

One of the leaders of the church at the time, Jay Golden Kimball said, "There has never been a time in my life or any period of my life where I felt better spiritually and more willing to do my duty and serve the Lord and labor for his cause and for his interests."

And Jay Golden Kimball was a colorful man with colorful language and mostly colorful history. And I feel what he said there. I don't always want to do stuff for other people. I like sitting on the couch and watching television, but I'm making these efforts, like this video, to make myself accessible or to share and to do my part to help God's message get out there.

I don't know if anyone's made it this far in the video, but I would just ask that if you're a member of the church, just don't ever stop being every member a missionary. Keep that mindset. And if you're against the church, I would ask you to just reflect on why you're against the church and really evaluate those feelings.

And if you still have them, that's fine. That's your prerogative. If you want to be rabidly against us or indifferent to us or for us, I don't care. That's your journey, your decision. You got to do all that. I can't tell you do this or else. You're going to do what you want to do. And if you're investigating the church, just keep doing it. Keep reading, talk to members, pray, read your scriptures.

There's three works right there. That there's nothing bad in them. Nothing in there says, go kill children and adultery and... It's the same kind of good advice that's in the Bible, that's in a lot of other scriptures like the Quran and the various Hindu texts.

It's a guidebook to a moral compass that has an underlying theme that tells you what you need to do per our beliefs to have salvation, to have peace, to prosper in the life that comes after this. Just read it, look for the answers, pray. I say these things in the name of the son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Reflections on my first semester of BYU-Pathway Worldwide

I thought I would write up a little review of BYU-Pathway Worldwide as when I was investigating the program I just wanted to know “What is BYU-Pathway like?” but it wasn’t very easy to find any content from people that had done the program with the exception of a few very brief YouTube videos that didn’t really tell me anything.

What is BYU Pathway like you ask? Let us start with what exactly BYU-Pathway Worldwide is.

What is BYU-Pathway Worldwide?

BYU-Pathway Worldwide was created to serve online students. Degrees are awarded by BYU-Idaho and Ensign College, while BYU-Pathway provides the resources to help applicants succeed. You start with 1 year of classes that help prepare you for admission into BYU-I or Ensign College and earn you credit for those institutions during that first year. This program is designed for busy adults that want to continue their education.

The best part, at least to me, is that this program locks in a VERY cheap credit hour price. At the time of writing this, July 23rd, 2021, the program locks in a $77 credit hour for students. Obviously, this will go up for future participants but while I’m doing it that was a major selling point to me as it means I should not have to borrow a single cent to complete a 4-year degree.

But you say “wait, Ryan, I Googled this and it looks like one of those Mormon religious things…”. Well, erm, yeah, it is. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has colleges, clears throat, just like the Jesuits have Georgetown University and Boston College, Notre Dame has a Catholic affiliation, etc. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has created this program for both members, and non-members, alike as education is something that the Church holds to be very important.

“But Ryan, I get that Notre Dame is a well known school, is this just some kinda degree mill from some university I’ve never heard of?” Nope. As of the time of this writing, U.S. News & World Report ranks BYU-I as the 13th best college. BYU-I is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.

Alright, enough of that, so you want to know what a semester is like, right? Well, I have just finished my first semester and, while finding parts of the program a bit annoying or just tedious, overall have been happy.

The Basics

At present, the program consists of 3 semesters spanning the course of a year. Each semester you do a religion class and a regular class for that first year, the religion class is to satisfy the religion requirement for BYU-I and, at least for the first semester, is very basic and not too painful or stressful.

The Gatherings

Each week you have a 2-hour‘ gathering’, while before covid these were in person (and may return to in-person at some point) my gathering is done via Zoom each week. The first hour we do the non-religion class, take a 5-10 minute break and then use the remainder of the second hour for the religion portion. These 2-hour gatherings are student led… yeah, at first I was like “ugh, this is going to be terrible” and “ugh, this is so annoyhing” and “ugh, I totally don’t want to have to lead 1-2 of these things each semester” but, you know, it’s really not that bad. I’ve found that after the first few weeks when we all figured stuff out, that I actually enjoy having a different student leading each week as really the bulk of what you do in the gathering is going over the stuff you self-studied and it is actually refreshing to me to have a different leading style for each hour every week. The gatherings have an agenda, provided ahead of time by the program, that you basically just read and help nudge people to discuss the topics. Some of it is done as the whole group and some is done in breakouts from 2 people to 3-4 people depending on what the agenda suggests for that portion. This sounds kinda blah but, again, once you get into the swing of things it actually works out rather nicely as it helps you to share personal experiences/thoughts and then come together as a mini group to share with the larger group what you discussed and how it applies to the material. As someone that has worked in an office for 16 years, this emulates an office/team dynamic really well and would be great for people that do not have that real-world experience.

The group you gather with, if it is anything like mine, is likely to contain quite a variety of people. My gathering contains 2 immigrants, a Canadian couple, people ranging in age from 20s to 60s, 2 individuals that are converts to the Church within the past year and a half, blue and white-collar workers, 2 recovered addicts, and even someone improving their life via education after having served time in prison, and we have 3 native languages represented with no communication difficulties in our group. It’s a truly diverse group and I’ve definitely been inspired by, and learned from, the unique experiences of my gathering-mates and I would suspect my unique experiences have also helped some of them. I definitely feel like I have a much more diverse group of people here than I would in a traditional brick-and-mortar college program where I live.

The Classes

The class content you access via a web portal like this:

From here you can click on your courses on the right hand side to open them. As an example here is what the PC 101 - Life Skills course modules look like for the first week:

In a typical week in the Life Skills class you will have a devotional video to watch, some reading material which covers some general life skills, writing and math instruction, a writing assignment that builds each week based on what you have previously been introduced to, a math quiz based on the math contained in the week’s lesson which may also include math from the previous weeks as a refresher, and then in the gathering module you can see the gathering agenda for the gathering and you will self-report that you attended the gathering after the gathering.

For the math extra links are included for videos and other content that can help you learn what is being taught if the course material is insufficient. You will also go over a sample problem in the gathering as a group that covers the material taught that week. For me the math was definitely a stumbling block as the highest thing I had passed in high school was pre-algebra (for those reading between the lines, yes I did not graduate from high school but I did obtain my GED when I should have graduated) but my wife teaches math for a living so I was very blessed to have her as a resource to be my personal tutor so don’t be afraid to ask those around you for help if you are struggling with some of the math. There will occasionally be short videos to watch in the self-study material too. This course would realistically take you 1-5 hours of self-study a week depending on your familiarity with writing and the math for the week.

For the religion course you have a comparable weekly course load:

You will have a few minute devotional to watch, personal study (scroll down for a screenshot of week 2 as an example of the amount of content), an assignment where you teach a friend/family member based on the material for that week which then has a couple of questions you answer in a few hundred words about what you learned teaching them/about the material, the gathering preparation which includes the agenda and some questions you will discuss as a group, and then a personal study report which is a few multiple choice questions then a few 75-300 word questions asking you to describe specific things about what you learned that week. I found this course required 1-2 hours a week of self-study/homework from me, your mileage may vary depending on your familiarity with the material. Here’s an example of what you will study in a week:

The Annoying Bits

Like with everything, there are some annoying bits:

• People are going to drop out. My gathering by week 4 or 5 had lost 20-30% of the students, by week 10 we were at half the number we started with which means we went from needing to lead 1 gathering each to needing to lead 2 gatherings each. Your gathering is together for the entire 3 semesters so who knows how few of us will be left by the 3rd semester.

• For the material you are already familiar with, it can feel like you are doing extremely tedious busywork. The assignments in each week can be quite repetitive, I imagine this is great if the material is new to you, but if you are competent with the concepts/familiar with the material it can be a wee bit annoying.

• There is a limited ability to see each week’s content until close to that week begins. I would prefer to be able to look at the material for the whole course the first day and not just the headings. Given full time work, a calling, a wife, and trying to maintain some sort of life outside of these things it would be nice to be able to know in advance how much time I’m going to need to set aside for a given week

• Everything is digital. If you are someone that likes to hold what you are reading, or to highlight and make notes, I hope you have access to a printer as you’re going to have to print the content. Personally I don’t mind this, but watching my wife work on her Masters degree I can tell some people 100% need to have physical media they can scribble and color all over.

• The entire web interface is just a bit clunky and will either require a lot of muscle memory, a lot of bookmarks, or a lot of tabs chronically open to be able to quickly look at everything for the two courses. There is an announcements section which honestly, I completely forgot existed after the first couple of weeks and only remembered it existed when someone, in my final week of the semester, mentioned in my gathering that their religion grader had shared a bunch of stuff that way and I’ve found no way to receive notifications to my email when new content is posted.

• Attending the gatherings are a good deal of your grade. You’re expected to miss none, but my understanding has been you can get away with missing 1-2 before it is a very serious problem and you will lose points for both classes by missing just one gathering. I understand the same mostly applies for traditional college but in a program designed for busy working adults, that may or may not have children, that may or may not have Church callings with demands, that may or may not be single parents, I personally think this should be a little more relaxed. If you do know, in advance, that you are going to be unable to make your gathering you CAN visit a gathering that meets at a different time or day that one week though, so that does allow for planned absence and in my gathering we’ve had 2 people attend ours for a week each due to scheduling conflicts.

• In general the byupathway.org website is wholly lacking in information about the program and what information is there is often buried under multiple page navigations. It is often frustrating to try and find out any sort of information about the program itself as well as what transitioning to BYU-I will be like after the completion of your 3 semesters.

• If you have previous college credit, they will NOT tell you what will transfer until you finish the 3 semesters of Pathway… I really want to know how many of my credits from when I attempted an associated previously would transfer so I could judge how quickly I might complete a 2-year degree and 4-year degree, as if very few were going to transfer I likely just wouldn’t have done the program because I’ve already sunk a ton of money into those credits 15 years ago. This is extremely frustrating.

Conclusion

Overall I’m happy I decided to do the program. I grumbled quite a bit to my wife throughout the first semester but I don’t regret doing it and look forward to knocking the next two semesters out so I can start “proper” college and know how close I am to finishing my associates and heading full-steam ahead into a bachelors degree. As a final assignment for the PC101 class we were asked to write a letter to new students, I’ll share that here:

“Welcome to Pathways! You are in for an interesting ride. I remember being in your shoes wondering what classes would be like and who would be taking them with me. I can tell you that you are likely to meet some unique people from many different walks of life. Hang in there and enjoy your group. They will be a big motivation and support system to help you keep going. Two things that you should do to prepare for the course are to set aside some time every week to complete the workload and be open to help from others. It is important that you are prepared for each class so that you can contribute to the discussions. I would say that you need at a minimum 2-3 hours a week to read the materials, watch the videos, and complete the assignments. What really helped me was to set aside the same block of time each week/day to complete the work. It kept me on schedule. Another big thing for me was getting help on the math from my wife. Just remember that it is okay to ask for help. Your classmates will be a strength to you but have a support system. People who ask you every week how it is going and who will help you even if it is just reading with you or looking over your papers.

Coupled with the preparation, two things that helped me succeed were to finish the assignments a day or two before the due dates and listening to some of the assigned talks instead of reading them. Getting the assignments done early gave me a cushion in case there was extra reading or math vides for the week. It also helped me to not feel anxious or stressed about the upcoming class on Wednesday. I also found that reading each talk took a long time. It was faster for me to listen to them online and follow along. I could stop the video if I needed to and look at paragraphs or places in depth.

My only other piece of advice is that you can do this. Many of the people who started with me dropped out over the weeks until we were down to just a handful of us. I am sure each one had their reasons for not continuing, but it has been extremely rewarding to me to complete my first semester. Remember the reasons why you started pathways and stick to those. Praying for help is also great too.”

My journey to the LDS faith

Below is the story of how I came to be of the LDS faith, how I came to be a Mormon convert. I apologize in advance for how this is written, it is copy-pasted from an instant message conversation.
                                                                    
                                            
My religion story is a long story.

So, preschool and half of kindergarten... I attended a private Christian school. Lots of questionable things were going on there, including alleged molestations... my parents pulled me out and put me in public school. Mom and I went to a Lutheran church for a few years but dad didn't go that often (partially due to work I believe, not sure). Then after a few years we mostly stopped going. Fast forward a few more years and dad is diagnosed.

Dad was diagnosed with cancer and fairly quickly decided to search out a church. We bounced around to a few different churches and ended up at a Methodist church, we were there until he died then after a few months we stopped going. I was quite upset with God around this time for letting my father quite literally die in my arms 12 days before my 13th birthday. I felt wronged, I felt cheated, I was quite upset.

Before dad got sick I had seen the movie "The Craft", that was around 95/96 and the world wide web was still a fairly new place, with websites in the few millions unlike today's insane numbers. There were a good handful of pagan/neo-pagan/wiccan websites, and a friend and I read up on them, printed a lot of stuff out. Had it in a folder in my bedroom, parents found it one time and freaked out, told his parents, we both got sat down and had a good talking to etc. So back to where I was, here I am mad at God... and I've got the pagan/neo-pagan/wiccan seed in my brain.

Right, so we were hanging out at the mall a lot around this time and were buying books at the mall dealing with the 'new-age' field, devouring a lot of texts on these types of beliefs and hiding the books. I dabbled with that until about oh 18 or so. Then we all drifted away from that. At that time I encountered 'Spiritual Satanism'

Essentially it is a group of people that have a belief similar to the LDS belief system. Pre-mortal existence, a side for God, a side that agrees with Satan(so against God), and (not seen so often in modern LDS beliefs, but in early church history) a side that wished to remain neutral... but they believe that God created man to serve Him. Satan is Jesus' brother.

They (spiritual Satanists) believe that Satan came to Earth and gave up his pre-mortal existence to enlighten mankind. To share with them the knowledge that God has, and to help them be God's equals, not his servants(they generally use slaves). They say that Jesus gave up his pre-mortal existence to come down and help spread God's lies to combat Satan's(generally they prefer Lucifer) teachings.

Well I was mixed up with that for oh a year or so, and I saw my life just going to the dogs.

So I went back to my search for the 'right religion'. I dabbled with Buddhism, gave Hinduism and Brahmism a try, gave Islam a 6 month or so trial. All this time I had known about the LDS faith, and had even read the Book of Mormon a few times along with many other religious texts so I filled out the thing on the main website requesting contact from missionaries several times and nothing, all during my 'testing' of the other religions I kept trying to get missionaries to come visit... nothing, ever, no calls, no nothing. Eventually I would receive a free Book of Mormon in the mail, but never a phone call.

I really liked Islam, saw it as good, but it never felt quite right. In fact I still have many Muslim friends. But, Islam never felt right... so I looked into Judaism, I went to many denominations of Christian faiths, etc. I even looked at some Shamanistic practices

One day I was on www.ldschat.com complaining for the millionth time how I always tried to get missionaries to come speak to me about the LDS faith, so I could pick their brains, try to see why they thought the LDS faith was the one true faith. It happened to be the night of Institute here at a ward about five minutes from my house. A girl that lived just down the road from me happened to be on, saw what I said, asked where I lived, when she realized how close I was told me where the ward was and told me there were classes there that night. So I met her and her sister in the parking lot and sat in on an Institute session.

I then decided to meet with missionaries and begin the discussions, fortunately for me the family let me do all of the discussions at there home, as it just wasn't going to work at my mom's house. So I got through the discussions as quick as they could meet with me to do them, I then was baptized on July 9th 2005, which was a Saturday. Oddly enough the following Monday the toll free number called and asked if I had received my copy of the Book of Mormon (from many months ago) and if I'd like to meet with missionaries. I told the young woman on the phone my story, we shared a laugh, and she welcomed me to the church as well. And there you have it, my story.