Blissfully...Inept?

Going through my first draft I realized how much credit I give him...I don't take it back but I definitely exaggerated his role in my decision. Anyways, the topic for my talk was adjusted and was tweaked and now I have finally finished rewriting a new first draft. Here it is:

When I was six years old my mom married the best man I have ever known and am proud to call dad. Along with completing our family, and teaching me many life lessons, he also brought something very important to my life. Before that point I hadn’t ever known who Christ was. Regardless of his religion, that was my first introduction to Heavenly Father and his word. Throughout the following years I had experiences that made me believe and ones that left me hoping that he wasn’t real, because how could anyone watch me go through them?

When I was eleven my back broke, and I underwent countless test, MRI’s and even 2 non conclusive biopsies. As horrible as it was, I knew that not only had I already been through worse, but that I would no doubt experience worse to come, but when I was twelve my doctor told me and my mom that he was going to test me for about four different cancers, two of which didn’t have lasting treatments. I came to terms with death, I was fine with it. But I had conditions, and this is where my conversion story begins, because that was the first time in my life that I knelt at the end of my bed, and asked God for something. I asked that if he couldn’t heal me, if he could at least make it not hurt to die, I asked if he would watch over my mom and sister, I asked for strength and courage, and I asked for a friend, so someone not related to me would notice when I was gone. After that I started asking my grandparents about God and I started going to meetings, but I felt like I never learned anything. Whenever I asked a question someone would answer me like I was stupid for not knowing or would tell me “We don’t know, wait until the Paradise and ask God yourself.” When I was fourteen I stopped going entirely. I pretty much decided at that point that since no one could answer my questions, and I couldn’t see it then it wasn’t worth my time.

 

I became agnostic and I was perfectly content being that way. Sophomore year, though, I met Jordan Collins, officially. I had already heard of him so much from my friends who had classes with him and were crushing on him that I didn’t like him. At all, like so sick of him. And then I met him, learned what a Mormon was (it was a religion, I mean who knew?) and we became friends. We exchanged number and the summer after Sophomore year is when the questions really started. I asked him everything I thought of, even the stupid questions. At this point I would like to say some of the questions I had asked: “How does man have the right to baptize people?” “Why do we have physical bodies if we are created in his image and he is a spirit?” “Why do I have to wait to get answers if God is so powerful, why can’t he tell me?” “How do you know it is true if God doesn’t speak to people anymore?” He answered them all. Very thoroughly, with references, personal insight, and no pressure on me to believe it. Before long it became a habit to ask him things in comparison to what my grandparents believed as well and by spring Junior year I was staying up until the wee hours of the morning multiple times a week asking questions, joking around, and always being sarcastic, now don’t get me wrong not all of our conversations were about the gospel, but for awhile there that’s usually how they started anyways. I learned at least one new thing every time we talked. And that is to this day.

Then, for about five and half months during senior year, we didn’t talk, barely at all, only about AP Homework. Never about belief or religion. I was dating someone who just, did not like me talking to Jordan, refused to believe that Jordan and I were just friends, and I cannot even explain how much he did not like Jordan Collins. But as most high school relationships do, it ended and one day I covered for Grace, my  absolute best friend, as she responded to Jordan for prom, very creepily I might add, and then after a bad incident at the school blood drive, Jordan and my relationship picked up right where it left off, only now it starts going a lot faster. Within a couple weeks he gave me a book of Mormon, with his testimony and a few of his favorite scriptures marked. I went to the Sunday session of General Conference with his family, and by the end I didn’t really want to leave. I believe it was the very next week that I began the lessons, but Jordan had already told me a lot of the information, I have this notebook at home full of random things he said and questions he answered from sophomore year until that General Conference.

When the missionaries asked me if I would be baptized, despite how I felt I hesitated, I had things to repent and what about my family? So I said maybe, if I truly believed it. I already knew though, I knew it would happen, I remember trying to talk myself out of it.

The priesthood, the fact that God has a physical body, personal revelation…believing in those things…how could I forget about the Restoration, and the feeling I got at general conference and when I read the scriptures? The missionaries asked if I would be baptized on May 11^th on a night that Jordan taught the lesson at his house, and I hesitated, not because because I didn’t want it, but because of my family. I said yes anyways.

 

When I look back at the beginning of my conversion I think of the missionaries (and everyone else for that matter) telling me that baptism is only the beginning, and how true that is, for so many different reasons. In true to the faith the conversion process is broken down like this, and I am sure it will sound familiar: exercising faith in Jesus Christ, repenting of sin, being baptized, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end in faith.

Conversion is marked by all five of the missionary points. Things I had to recite a few times during the lessons, like a pop quiz. But let’s go through them. The first time I prayed was the first time I exercised faith in the Savior, even if I didn’t really know. I had a desire to believe that my prayer was being heard. That was conversion. Every time I have prayed since, and every time I will continue to pray in the future I will experience conversion. As I repented of my sins, and as I repent now and when I feel the forgiveness and I know that all I have left is to forgive myself; that is conversion. When I was baptized, and every week that I partake of the sacrament and renew those covenants, I experience conversion. When I was confirmed a member of the church and received the gift of the Holy Ghost and the blessing I have received from the priesthood since, were moments of conversion. All of those moments were conversion stories within themselves. But what about enduring to the end?

In Richard G. Scott’s talk entitled Full Conversion Brings Happiness he says, “Your happiness now and forever depends on your DEGREE of conversion and the transformation that it brings to your life.”

In that talk as well as Elder Bednar’s Converted Unto the Lord, both men refer to a goal of FULL conversion. So I asked myself, for me, what is full conversion? In trying to figure out the answer to that I did four things:

1.       I prayed. If I have learned anything from Jordan Collins, it is pray even when your mind tells you it won’t work. I prayed that the Holy Ghost might guide me to the knowledge I sought and that it would testify to me the true answer to my questions.

2.       I re-listened to both talks. Again and again and again.

3.       I went through the five hundred old texts in my phone from Jordan Collins, because I learn something new whenever I do, and I learned at least three more times that I needed to pray again.

4.       I read conversion stories on a site called mormonconverts.com and most were beautiful, but ended at baptism.

This is what I came up with:

                Full conversion is finding something that you believe so thoroughly that your morals, thoughts, habits and opinions change. It is acquiring so great a faith in The Gospel that you are more than willing to live true to it no matter what you have to give up in the process. Full conversion is being proud of your beliefs and being “Cheerful” whenever they are brought up. True conversion requires you to consistently obey and consistently re-convert through scripture study, daily prayer, attending church, and making and keeping sacred covenants. Full conversion is enduring every single day until the end in faith. There should never come a day that our conversion doesn’t grow. When Richard G. Scott refers to the DEGREE of your conversion, he is referring to the amount of effort you place in your beliefs, and in serving the Lord. He is talking to each of us, and giving us a reminder that we must always strive to be Christlike, and to grow in spirit and in faith.

At the end of Richard G. Scott’s Full Conversion Brings Happiness he testifies that “…as you pray for guidance, the Holy Ghost will help identify the personal changes you need to make for full conversion.”

Every one of us is different and has different struggles, we all have different habits and trials in our lives. Some changes we will have to make will be obvious, but others might be subtle. There may be times when you look around and think everyone else has it easier or that they make all the right decisions and don’t struggle with worldly temptations, but I assure you that we all have our own struggles and we have all made the wrong decision at some point. I know I certainly have.

                Something we all learn as kids is not to compare ourselves to others. I struggled with that for a long time, I had a few people in my life that liked to point out the differences that made her better than me, or them better than us. It wasn’t until my brief yet, life-changing stay in Nevada that it truly sunk in, and as much as I hate to say it, it is just one more thing that Jordan taught me, or rather, re-taught me. He reminded me as he so often does that I am amazing and when I compare myself to others I am making a never-ending chain of disappointment for myself, because and I quote, “The list will go on forever, and all it would do is succeed at pointing out my ineptitude when I should have been focusing on developing what I had, rather than basing what I didn’t on others.”

                It is important to remember to pray for guidance as Richard G. Scott said, because we are all different and we will all have to make different adjustments and changes our lives. When I prayed to receive an answer to this, oh, Tuesday I think, I thought there was no way I would receive an answer quickly, but in preparing for this talk, I went through my journals, and for those who don’t know me, it is a very extensive collection of random writing that is sometimes about me. So I was reading and all of a sudden halfway through an entry about prune juice I read this, “It hasn’t been easy to fully incorporate the gospel into my life. I still have problems remembering that the first thing I need to do when I wake up is pray, and the last thing before I lay down to sleep, is pray. I can’t seem to find enough minutes in the day to study and pray and get everything else done. I hate it, because I want to. I know that I am getting better, but I am not good enough.”

I still don’t remember to pray when I wake up, or when I go to bed, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night get out of bed and remember to pray. I pray when I drive, and when I do study, and when I just need to talk to someone and my journal isn’t cutting it. But it isn’t my first instinct. It needs to be, and that is a change that I need to make in my life in order to increase the degree of my conversion.

                I know that I convert again and again, when I talk about the gospel, with anyone. Or I get an email from Africa telling me that I inspire him. When I go to Thanksgiving with the Toricelli’s and end up at the Henry’s with the Collins and fifty-some-odd people pray together. When I set the example to myself of who I want to be when I grow up. I will always be a convert, but I hope that there will not come a day in any of our lives that we aren’t converted. I hope that my conversion can be renewed daily as I live what I have come to believe. And finally, I hope that all of you can find it in yourselves to recognize the little things that re-convert you every single day, the little moments that remind you why you are here, who you are, and where you come from, and to just be thankful for those moments, because your personal conversion is a never-ending blessing from God that no one can ever take from you.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

He did play a huge role, but not as much as I originally alluded to. I truly believe everything I wrote even if my times were a little off. I think writing this talk has made me miss him even more, but I know that he is doing great things. Teaching lots of people, stubborn people, but hey, he taught me, so he got some practice in.

Gospel Guru- Jordan Collins(aka Great Scott!) A leader/mentor focused around teaching the gospel

 



Sincerely,

SamanthaMarie