Week 19

So last week I got an email from the Sister who runs the newsletter for the mission and she asked if I would be willing to write my conversion story in about 800 words. So I figured I'd send that to you all this week. I probably got more out of writing it than anyone will get out of reading it but it's all good haha conversion is an amazing thing! Thank you to everyone who has emailed me or sent me letters and prayers, it means a lot! Thank you so much! Here's my article:

My name is Elder Anderson. Conversion is a miracle in my eyes. It will be hard to tell a story about a process that is ongoing but this is how I got to where I am today. I’ve been going to church every week for longer than I can remember. I have amazing parents who are active and faithful members of the church and are great examples to me. I grew up in the church. I was “active”. But over the past couple of years I’ve come to understand that for me, activity in the church didn’t signify conversion. I wasn’t truly converted. The doctrines of the gospel were things that I felt and thought were right, but I couldn’t say I knew they were.  There was a lot I didn’t understand because I wasn’t active spiritually. I was that way through most of high school and into college.

The change in missionary age happened during my first semester of college and I was already 19. I watched my friends get their mission calls and leave and it was pretty exciting to see them take that step. As years went by I saw a lot of those friends come home and move forward with their lives. I wanted to move on with my life but I didn’t feel right moving on without going on a mission. There was a lot I thought a mission could offer me but there were things I needed to change in order to go on a mission. I would go through phases of being really motivated to change but because I wasn’t giving “place for a portion of [the] words” of the gospel to take root inside of me, I didn’t see lasting change. Conversion “goes beyond behavior; it is a change in our very nature”. I changed my behavior time and time again but I hadn’t changed my nature. The natural man is an enemy to God and it’s an enemy to us. I had a desire to change because I wanted what other people had, but I didn’t want to give up any part of myself to get it. I was pretty selfish. I decided to take a break from college and focus on going on a mission. I started working instead of going to school and I found that I still wasn’t making the changes I needed to. Again, I was “active” but there were still worldly things I held onto that kept me from getting to where I needed to be. One of the things that would cross my mind a lot regarding serving a mission was my future family. I felt like my future family deserved to have the best possible version of me and I felt that going on a mission would help me to become that person. I started thinking of someone other than myself but I started getting angry and asking God why it was so hard to do what He asked of me. I was mad at Him and I was mad at myself and I really felt like it was hopeless to improve. But He loves me, and He was humbling me. He knows me and He knows that I like to do things on my own and not ask for help. But I can’t return to Him without help. Ether 12:27 and Alma 38:9 perfectly explains the situation I was experiencing and what I came to understand. When I realized that I needed His help and the Help of my Savior is when I’d say my conversion started.

In a 2004 conference talk given By D. Todd Christofferson called “When Thou Art Converted”, he says that “the gospel cannot be written in [our] hearts unless [our] hearts are open”. We’re also commanded to have a “broken heart and a contrite spirit”. My heart was closed to my Father in Heaven and I know that in order for the gospel to be written in my heart, He had to break it, or break me, to humble me in order for him to work with me. As missionaries we can see a lot of the ways that our Father in Heaven prepares people in our areas to receive the gospel but He prepares us missionaries and members too. He prepares all of His children to turn to Him and learn the things He has to teach them, whether they’re members or not. We are all God’s investigators and converts and He wants us to make progress towards the invitation to “repent...and enter in at the straight gate, and continue in the way...until [we]...obtain eternal life”. He will always be working on us to help us to turn more towards Him. My conversion has only continued from being on my mission and my testimony is stronger than it has ever been. I know that Heavenly Father has a plan for each and every one of us, but we have to be humble and choose to turn to Him and follow that plan. It requires us to give ourselves to Him, so that He can shape us into something better than we can imagine.

Elder Anderson