I am a proud member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

I wasn’t born a member – I joined the church on March 1, 2009. It was the absolute best decision I’ve ever made. My life has changed in ways I never could have expected or predicted.  My testimony – my knowledge that the Gospel is true – gets stronger every. single. day.

This is why I joined the Church. Six Months later, this is how I felt. And now that a year has passed, wow.

You see, I don’t just believe that the Church is true. I know that it is, without any hesitation.

Please know that I welcome all questions about my conversion story, the Church, and everything I know and believe in. If you’re not comfortable asking here, you can always e-mail me.

But let’s go back to the beginning, hmm?

I was raised Episcopalian. After my brother and I were confirmed, we all but stopped going to church. We became a Christmas and Easter family. When we did go to church, the only people who spoke to us were the people my father knew from work. It never felt safe or familiar, it was just something we did. When my mother asked me one time why I thought we went to church, I told her I had no idea. She told me she knew she and my father wouldn’t always be around for me and my brother. She wanted us to have someone else to turn to when we needed help. I told her I would never turn to the people at church. She said, “I didn’t mean the church, I meant God.”

In grad school, I started going to a church with a friend of mine. The people were warm and loving. I thought, “these people get it.” Finally a place where they spoke of Christ’s love, and earnestly tried to walk in that love.

In October 2008 I was living in New York City, working in finance, waiting for my life to begin. I thought I was happy, but I knew something was missing. I wanted to find a place I belonged, to stop feeling so lonely all the time. My life seemed an endless haze of working in a job I didn’t like, trying to make everyone else in my life happy, and struggling to figure out who I was and how to get where I wanted to be.In New York I hoped to find a church like the one I’d gone to with my friend. But I didn’t know where to start and was scared to go on my own without any guidance.

I started reading Wedding Bee while I was bored at work. One bride in particular stood out to me: Miss Avocado (Jenna). I looked forward to all of her posts because I enjoyed her writing style. When I ran out of new posts to read, I started going back and reading the old ones including this one about the Temple wedding ceremony. I was hooked. I started to follow her personal blog – That Wife – and she continued to share more about her life and the Gospel.

Time passed and Jenna and I struck up the kind of friendship that results from reading each others blogs. She would comment on my blog, and I would comment on hers. But then one day she wrote a post asking her readers what they’d like to know more about. I wrote her an e-mail that was about 10 pages long, full of every question I could think of. I never realized I had so many questions! But Jenna was very patient and thanked me for asking.

Then came the fateful day. I wrote this post and thought very little of it at the time (pay close attention to the first part). But when I opened my e-mail soon after that I found an e-mail from Jenna. She said she had read my post and thought because I’d expressed so much interest in the Gospel already that maybe I’d like to try going to the LDS church and if I did, she would love to help me go. I told her I wasn’t sure, but I’d like to visit.

The missionaries came to visit for the first time on January 16, 2009. After they left, I wrote Jenna an e-mail that said, among other things, this:

Elders Leatham and Amison just left my apartment. I’m not sure there
are words right now to express what I am feeling.

I want to thank you so much for inviting me to learn more about the
Church and your faith, and for helping to arrange the meeting tonight.
Already I feel incredibly inspired by what I have learned tonight. I
cannot wait to start reading the Book of Mormon and to better
understand the plan that God has for us.

I am so grateful to have had this opportunity and seriously if it were
not for you I am not sure I ever would have had the chance to learn
about the Gospel. Like I said, I have always been curious but was too
shy to ask. You gave me a chance to ask, and then made me feel
comfortable asking even the silliest questions. If you had not reached
out and told me it was possible, I would not be sitting here right now
feeling so full of hope and inspiration.

I went to church for the first time that Sunday and never looked back.

I was baptized on February 22, 2009 (pictured here with Elders Leatham and Amison):

I was confirmed on March 1, 2009 (pictured here with my friend John, who was baptized that day):

In case you’re wondering, Jenna and I didn’t meet in person until September 6, 2009. She was living in Dallas, and I was in New York City until July when I moved back to Northern Virginia. In September she came to Washington DC for a friend’s wedding and we were able to go to church together and have a nice picnic in Rock Creek Park afterwards. It was a day I’ll never forget.