My Conversion Story in a nutshell

I first met a Mormon on my second day as a freshman at Occidental College. I had never heard the term before. As this guy was being teased about being a “Mormon”, I laughed along with everyone because I didn’t want to let on that I had no idea what a “Mormon” was. Right afterwards I Googled “M-O-R-M-O-N” and my life has never been the same.
I have experienced all different kinds of religions. My friends have been Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Sikh, Hindi, Jain, Buddhist, Shinto, Tao, Baptist… and the list goes on. I was raised with a basic belief in God and a pattern of short prayers before bedtime under the watchful eyes of my mother, but that was the extent of my own personal religious experience as a child.
As I grew up, my parents’ deteriorating marriage had a great effect on me and my mother was firm in her notion that she would never allow a divorce to happen because “divorce isn’t allowed in the Bible.” By 16 I became anti-Christian, because of this Bible that kept my mother in a bad marriage. As a Goth I spent my time getting drunk, playing video games, going to concerts, and swearing about anything to everyone. I reveled in my ability to push others away, to isolate myself so that no one could hurt me, I got a high off of scaring people, and I survived by numbing my pain and emptiness with numerous shots of Tequila and copious amounts of cheap beer.
Inside, however, I tired of the drinking, the darkness, the black makeup clutching my eyes… the scared looks from passerby’s. I dearly wanted to escape from my depressing group of friends who spoke of nothing but death, pain, hate, and escapism. I wanted to be appreciated, and I wanted to be happy, but I didn’t know how.
So then I found myself at school, Googling the word “Mormon”. I ended up at lds.org, and mormon.org, the official websites of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I had developed my own form of spirituality over the years to atone for the inadequacies and hypocrisy I had experienced with mainstream Christianity, and suddenly, I found them written down on this Church’s websites. They spoke of “Eternal families” where you would never be parted from the ones you love, marriage was not “until death do you part” here. They spoke of Prophets and Apostles as in the days of the Old and New Testaments. They spoke of prayer, promising that God would hear me.
I read the Book of Mormon online without telling anyone. 5 months later I asked my friend to take me to church with him. I couldn’t believe that there was more than one man who prayed daily, read scriptures nightly, didn’t drink, didn’t swear, and wouldn’t touch me even if he could. I had always been taught that Christians were not supposed to have sex before marriage, but the Christians I knew, did… I thought that being Christian meant helping others and not judging, but none of the Christians I knew helped or cared at all. But the Mormons did these things. They abstained, they went to Church, they helped, and they cared.
In the summer, I found the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints near where I lived in Japan. Everyone was smiling, and shook my hand, and I was thrilled to see that there were plenty of Japanese Mormons too. In fact, there were Filipino’s, Chinese, Jamaican, Nigerian, and American Mormons here. The services operated the same way as they had at the Church in Glendale, and a girl about my age was giving one of the talks—about faith. Then a man who looked just like my father, a manager of a company, gave his testimony of Christ and of God and I felt something inside stir with hope, already thinking ahead to when I might be able to see my father do and say the same things. I found my Church. I wanted to be Mormon.
I took lessons with Japanese sister missionaries, and I started to change my life. I stopped drinking from the day I started reading the Book of Mormon—and not because the Church told me to. I stopped smoking, I tried to swear a little less every day… and I started to believe that I had the right to be respected by men—and not handled like an object. Eventually the missionaries asked if I wanted to get baptized, and I said yes… but I never got the chance. My mother was happy with my religious endeavors only because I finally accepted God again and relinquished my dark and dreary ways. However, she was furious when I got home and told her I was going to be baptized Mormon.
For the last month of that summer I was placed under house arrest. My phone was taken away, and I was not allowed out in case I met the missionaries against her will. However, suddenly the God I read about on mormon.org materialized. My father, with whom I share few words, inquired about my friends “Sister so and so”. Since he knew nothing about my investigation into Mormonism I had no idea how he knew about my sister missionaries. It turned out that he saw some letters addressed to me from the sister missionaries that my mother had intercepted and hidden. God had not forgotten me; in fact, he listened to my prayers… just like the Mormons promised.
I survived on the letters of encouragement and love from my sister missionaries and the night before I left for my sophomore year of college I told my mother that I would be getting baptized in America whether she liked it or not. She admitted she couldn’t physically stop me, but swore she could never love a Mormon—I would be no daughter of hers if I disobeyed. Nevertheless, I got baptized on October 15th, 2005. This was a year after I first met a “Mormon.” Now I am Mormon, and I am so happy.
I am happy because now I am living the standards and principles I always held inside—I am not hiding them. I choose not to drink alcohol, not to smoke, not to swear, not to watch R-rated movies, and not to have sex until marriage. By doing these things I am actively modeling a lifestyle I always admired in others. By not drinking alcohol, I am fighting against my father’s alcoholism. By not using profane language, I acknowledge the power of words and the pain they can cause. By not watching R-rated movies I admit to how weak and impressionable my mind is, and among other things, I fight the objectification of women in the media. By exercising abstinence, I place the highest value and importance on marriage.
Now that I am Mormon, I am no longer the only one that chooses to live this lifestyle—and for that I am so grateful.