My Conversion Story

I don't always stand up and let people know what is in my heart. I sit and listen through sacrament meeting, never thinking to get up myself and testify what I believe. I guess that that is what becomes of being such a private person. I believe that whether or not you are born into the gospel or baptised into it, you still need to become converted to it. I have not always had a conviction that the church is true. All through high school, I did all that a good little mormon girl should do. Never questioning, never faultering. But I can't honestly say that I knew then that the chruch was true. I just did all that I was taught to do. When I was 17 years old, I left home and I was on my own for the first time in my life. Something happened to me that made me question all that I had been taught. I didn't understand how something so bad could happen to someone who did all that I was asked to do. I saw it as my Heavenly Father turning his back on me. It made me wonder if the church really was true. What happened was so hard for me to deal with, that instead of trying to come to terms with it and let myself feel all that I needed to, I just shut down. I didn't want to feel anything at all. And to not feel, I couldn't pray either. It was easier that way.
Later on that year, I left the comfort of America and found myself in the unfarmilar country of Russia. An asult of strange sounds and smells hit me fericly as I walked out of the airport. The first sight that greeted me was an old badbushka releaving herself in the gutter across the street. The first night there, we stayed in a school in Moscow, sleeping in blankets on the gym floor. As the daylight turned to darkness, I heard many people cry out of homesickness. As for myself, all I could do is stare at the ever darkening ceiling. I was blank inside, having trained myself not to feel at all. Anyone ealse at 18 would have been scared and lonely in this unfarmilar land. But I was neither happy, nor sad. I felt no fear or comfort. I felt nothing at all.
I soon came to love Russia. I love the people, the language, the food, and the culture. It really is such a defining time in my life. It is where I grew up. It was the place that I learned who I was and all that I could handle. It is where I found myself again. About six months after the day that I steped onto Russian soil for the first time, I was now speaking fluently. I could barter in the marketplaces and I could hold my own in a conversation. Although I was told more then once that I spoke with a heavy American accent. But, hey, what am I going to do, I am an American.
One night while visiting Moscow, certin events led me to the concret cold floor of a bathroom, crying for the first time in over a year and a half. When you shut yourself off from feelings and then after a long period of time allow those feelings to live, the floodgates of emotions become overwheling. The onslaught of pent up emotions had a whole year and a half to become stronger and stronger. I couldn't bear all the different thoughts and feelings. I felt like I was being torn in half from the inside out. I was sure that every cell of my body was bleeding. An other event that I didn't let myself do for over a year was preformed that night, I prayed. But it was no humble prayer of submission and repentace. It was full of anger "How could you leave me alone like this. Didn't you know that I need you. When I needed you the most out of my whole life, you abandon me!! Don't you love me." I cried up into the ceiling. All of the sudden, in that cold country on that cold bathroom floor, I felt warmth so burning and powerful that I have no words in the English language to discribe it. I felt rather then heard the words "I was always here, it was you that left." Those felt words were so clear, I might as well have heard them.
Through it all, my Heavenly Father was still there for me. I might have slamed the door shut, but there he waited for me to open it again. Never walking away and never giving up on me. I might not always do all that I should. I am still learning, my testimony still growing. But I know that this is where I need to be, the church that I need to raise my children in. I may not be able to tell you when the church was organized and what Bigham Young said in the first confrece in the Salt Lake Valley, but I do know that my Heavenly Father loves me and will always be there for me. No mater how much I turn my back on him or how long I stop talking to him, in the end he will always welcome me with open arms and all the love of a father for his daughter.