Ryan Mercer - Ryan Mercer

My journey to the LDS faith

Saturday, January 1, 2011 at 10:00AM

Below is the story of how I came to be of the LDS faith, how I came to be a Mormon convert. I apologize in advance for how this is written, it is copy-pasted from an instant message conversation.

My religion story is a long story.

So, preschool and half of kindergarten... I attended a private Christian school. Lots of questionable things were going on there, including alleged molestations... my parents pulled me out and put me in public school. Mom and I went to a Lutheran church for a few years but dad didn't go that often (partially due to work I believe, not sure). Then after a few years we mostly stopped going. Fast forward a few more years and dad is diagnosed.

Dad was diagnosed with cancer and fairly quickly decided to search out a church. We bounced around to a few different churches and ended up at a Methodist church, we were there until he died then after a few months we stopped going. I was quite upset with God around this time for letting my father quite literally die in my arms 12 days before my 13th birthday. I felt wronged, I felt cheated, I was quite upset.

Before dad got sick I had seen the movie "The Craft", that was around 95/96 and the world wide web was still a fairly new place, with websites in the few millions unlike today's insane numbers. There were a good handful of pagan/neo-pagan/wiccan websites, and a friend and I read up on them, printed a lot of stuff out. Had it in a folder in my bedroom, parents found it one time and freaked out, told his parents, we both got sat down and had a good talking to etc. So back to where I was, here I am mad at God... and I've got the pagan/neo-pagan/wiccan seed in my brain.

Right, so we were hanging out at the mall a lot around this time and were buying books at the mall dealing with the 'new-age' field, devouring a lot of texts on these types of beliefs and hiding the books. I dabbled with that until about oh 18 or so. Then we all drifted away from that. At that time I encountered 'Spiritual Satanism'

Essentially it is a group of people that have a belief similar to the LDS belief system. Pre-mortal existence, a side for God, a side that agrees with Satan(so against God), and (not seen so often in modern LDS beliefs, but in early church history) a side that wished to remain neutral... but they believe that God created man to serve Him. Satan is Jesus' brother.

They (spiritual Satanists) believe that Satan came to Earth and gave up his pre-mortal existence to enlighten mankind. To share with them the knowledge that God has, and to help them be God's equals, not his servants(they generally use slaves). They say that Jesus gave up his pre-mortal existence to come down and help spread God's lies to combat Satan's(generally they prefer Lucifer) teachings.

Well I was mixed up with that for oh a year or so, and I saw my life just going to the dogs.

So I went back to my search for the 'right religion'. I dabbled with Buddhism, gave Hinduism and Brahmism a try, gave Islam a 6 month or so trial. All this time I had known about the LDS faith, and had even read the Book of Mormon a few times along with many other religious texts so I filled out the thing on the main website requesting contact from missionaries several times and nothing, all during my 'testing' of the other religions I kept trying to get missionaries to come visit... nothing, ever, no calls, no nothing. Eventually I would receive a free Book of Mormon in the mail, but never a phone call.

I really liked Islam, saw it as good, but it never felt quite right. In fact I still have many Muslim friends. But, Islam never felt right... so I looked into Judaism, I went to many denominations of Christian faiths, etc. I even looked at some Shamanistic practices

One day I was on www.ldschat.com complaining for the millionth time how I always tried to get missionaries to come speak to me about the LDS faith, so I could pick their brains, try to see why they thought the LDS faith was the one true faith. It happened to be the night of Institute here at a ward about five minutes from my house. A girl that lived just down the road from me happened to be on, saw what I said, asked where I lived, when she realized how close I was told me where the ward was and told me there were classes there that night. So I met her and her sister in the parking lot and sat in on an Institute session.

I then decided to meet with missionaries and begin the discussions, fortunately for me the family let me do all of the discussions at there home, as it just wasn't going to work at my mom's house. So I got through the discussions as quick as they could meet with me to do them, I then was baptized on July 9th 2005, which was a Saturday. Oddly enough the following Monday the toll free number called and asked if I had received my copy of the Book of Mormon (from many months ago) and if I'd like to meet with missionaries. I told the young woman on the phone my story, we shared a laugh, and she welcomed me to the church as well. And there you have it, my story.