A View From the Outside

I was asked to speak to the youth of my ward about my conversion. I chose to picture myself in Junior High, and thought of what I would tell a room full of Mormon Junior High students. This is what I read to them this past Sunday at their fireside.

How lucky you are. You may not realize it, but you are all exceedingly lucky. Your parents knew of this Church either before you were born (as I would guess is true for most of you), or, in the very least, some time before now. You go to Church, you go to firesides, and you hear people talking, giving you a great many messages that can help you for the rest of your lives.

But the question is – do you listen?

I don’t mean with your ears. What I mean is – do you listen to the Spirit inside you? Do you soften your heart and let the emotions inside you, do you put yourself in the shoes of the person talking and think about why it is that the Spirit touched them so much? Can you remember what it was like when you first learned about the Spirit, or the first time the Spirit touched you?

You see, I wasn’t Baptized at eight years old, as I assume most of you were. I was Baptized a mere two weeks ago.

In the few short weeks between missionaries coming to my home for the first time, and my Baptism, I read a lot of the Book of Mormon, and I did a lot of thinking about what it said. I want to share with you some of my thoughts – thoughts from someone that hasn’t been a member of the Church since birth.

Twenty four years ago, I knew a young man in my Junior High school. He was probably the second or third most popular person in my entire school. I was probably one of the least popular people in my school, and no one knew me – I had just moved here from Missouri. He was into sports. I wasn’t. We had absolutely nothing in common. Yet at the beginning of class every day he would ask me how I was doing. He would check in on me. He remembered little, insignificant details about what was going on with me. He would ask me how my program for my computer class was coming along – and he asked not because he was into computers, but because he knew I was. (You probably don’t know this, but twenty four years ago, computers were only used by geeks and nerds. Popular kids in school never even touched computers back then.)

I don’t remember seeing him much in High School, if at all, and I certainly didn’t see him after High School. Turns out he moved to Utah. But I remembered him. I remembered that he was LDS, I remembered that he was a good, kind person. As someone once said of how we should treat others – he was kinder than he had to be. That really struck me then, and I remembered it, for a long, long time.

We all know how nice we actually have to be. We know not to be rude to people. But that only goes so far. It is one thing to not call an annoying person a jerk. It is quite another to help someone you don’t even know when you have absolutely nothing to gain from it.

People notice kindness. So does Heavenly Father.

Matthew 25:40, paraphrased
Whatsoever you do unto the least of my brothers, that, you do unto me.

This works both ways. If we do something bad to someone, if we mistreat them, we do this to the Lord our God. Yet each act of kindness we visit upon another human being, we also do for Heavenly Father.

So why not listen to our hearts, listen to what we know is right and wrong, and take our actions based on that? For this to work though, we have to listen to the Spirit. And for us to be able to hear the Spirit, we need to let it in. We have to soften our hearts. We have to think about what impact our decisions have on others instead of thinking only about ourselves. Think about your co-workers, your family, your friends. Think even of the person that did something bad to you. Realize that just because someone wronged you does not make it ok for you to wrong them.

We know that if our baby brother bites our little sister that it is not ok for her to bite him back. By the same token, if someone does something to us that we don’t like, we need to remember it is not ok for us to treat them badly out of spite.

We all have the voice of the Spirit inside us. Unfortunately, we have the voice of the devil as well – always tempting us. Often times, what the devil is saying sounds so much more pleasant and easy than the voice of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is helping us keep our hand on the iron rod, walking steadfast toward the tree with the white fruit. It is up to us to listen to the voice that we choose.

When Nephi saw the vision of the Tree of Life, he saw the temptations of the devil, and the path to hell.

Nephi 12:16-17
“And the angel spake unto me, saying: Behold the fountain of filthy water which thy father saw; yeah, even the river of which he spake; and the depths thereof are the depths of hell. And the mists of darkness are the temptations of the devil, which blindeth the eyes, and hardeneth the hearts of the children of men, and leadeth them away into broad roads, that they perish and are lost.”

Nephi saw what temptation was capable of. He saw how it could keep us from following the Righteous path. When I read this, I realized that throughout my life I had imitated bad television shows and selfish people I knew even though I had read the Bible, and known right from wrong at an early age. Instead of living a Righteous life, it took some forty years before I let the light in. It took that long before I found the one True Church.

Before the missionaries came, I had many other Mormons in my life experience. They each taught me through their daily actions that they were good people. They did right, even when it would have been so much easier to have taken the easier path of temptation. They honored the Sabbath day, they spent time with their families, and they talked about God.

I ask each and every one of you to never forget the gift you all have in this Church. Always let the Spirit inside your heart. Reach out to those around you, friends or not, Mormon or not, and be nice to them. Love your neighbor. Treat others as you would want to be treated. Strive to do right rather than wrong.

Think, once in a while, what it must be like for people that don’t have the Church to help them in their lives. Put yourself in their shoes, think about how much it would help them to find their way. Reach out to those people when you can. Don’t expect your actions to convert them to the Church in that instant, but know in your heart that you are doing good, and that you are teaching by your example.

I thank Heavenly Father daily that my Mormon friends did that for me, for so many years of my life. My only regret is that it took such a long time for me to listen, for me to soften my heart enough to let the Spirit in so that I could find my way.

Who knows… maybe twenty four years from now, one of the people you treat nicely will remember your kindness and find the Church as I did. Your actions each and every day make a difference, whether you realize it or not.

The Spirit is in all our hearts, and it strives to guide us.

We need only listen.

If we soften our hearts and read the scripture, we will know the truth of it.

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.