The Gospel

I was thinking, yesterday, about my gospel journey.

I was born to a father who was an agnostic. "When we die, that is it. We cease to exist. There is no proof that there is a God," and other teaching that I won't go into.

My mom was a less-active Catholic. I was raised to school age with nothing. No prayers. No scriptures. No teachings of God or Jesus. Nothing religious whatsoever.

At the age of almost 5 years old, my father wanted me to have a "private school" education. No public school for me. I then spent the next 9 years in a psycho school. If I told you all the horrendous experiences that happened to children in that horrible school, you would cry. I cry when I remember them.

BUT, the good thing is, it was a Christian School. They taught Jesus. They taught the scriptures, the Bible. They taught prayer. I learned to love scriptures. It is a bit amazing that I loved the scriptures because whenever I was 'bad' at school I would get sent to the principal and she would say, "What did you do today?" Then, for my punishment, I would have to memorize scriptures and then go back to class.

In 7th grade, because of some neighbors that I liked, I joined the Catholic church. Oh, I loved reading the little books they gave me and I loved memorizing prayers, (which I can still recite today) and I wanted to be a Nun because they had beautiful habits (clothes) and rosaries and big huge pockets!

My first day to church after I had my first communion, my mom dropped me off at church with some friends that had come to town for my special day. She told us to walk home after church. It was about 2 miles home. During church I started feeling really weak. It was a special Sunday and they had a priest all decked out in fancy clothes with a big hat. He was burning incense and walking up and down the aisles. I felt sicker and sicker and very weak. We had to walk home and it ended up I had pneumonia. Needless to say, I never went back to church.

In 9th grade I went to a public high school. Again, no prayers, scriptures or any such thing. I began looking for "the true church" and couldn't find anything that matched the Bible and its teachings.

A big long story goes here but I am tired of writing right now so I will just say that about 6 or 7 years later Heavenly Father let me find The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At first I didn't believe the missionaries at all. But after a couple lessons they gave me a pamphlet, The Plan of Salvation, and I realized that this church follows the Bible more than any other church I had checked into!

I joined the church 32 years ago and my life has been blessed sooooo much! Even though it would have been nice to have the gospel from the beginning, I am so happy that, through God's love, I found the gospel and can feast everyday on the gospel meat...and treats!