She became Christian

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Ormus

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How a 'Mormon' leader became Christian.

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http://www.exmormon.org/kris.htm

I was a Mormon all my life. I was the all-around Mormon girl. I attended all four years of seminary, I held many church positions. I was ready to serve a mission when I became the right age. You name it, and I did it.

After I graduated, I decided to go to the University of Idaho- which was quite far away from my hometown-Pocatello, Idaho(which is very highly Mormon populated). I attended church in Moscow at their University Institute- the first one ever established. I was pretty active in my ward, but they didn't put me in a group for Family Home Evening (a meeting that's held on Monday nights for family-oriented studies and activities). The girls who lived next door to me had a Christian Bible Study, and they invited me to come with them- so I went- hoping that I would be able to convert someone. Well, the exact opposite happened. I started to learn more and more about God, and I saw something in my Christian friends that I had never seen before. Then one night when I went out to dinner with my Bible study leader, we started talking about it, and later that night I invited Jesus Christ into my life.

Now, leaving the church didn't happen very dramatically. I started taking Christian foundation classes because I wanted to learn how to further my relationship with Jesus Christ. Eventually I decided that I wanted to get re-baptized, and did so- also getting baptized in the Holy Spirit. My mom wasn't too happy with my decision. She had no idea of what was going on while I was away at college because I was afraid to tell her. I had a Mormon friend who left the church, and her family disowned her and kicked her out of the house when she was 16. I told my mom that I wasn't sure if I was going to leave the Mormon church or not, and that I would probably be going back to the church when I came home for the summer.

I don't think that was God's idea. Through the Holy Spirit, I came to realize things that didn't quite fit together with the Book of Mormon, the Mormon prophets, and everything else. I started reading the Bible everyday, and the Spirit showed me things that made me realize that I would probably never go back.

When I went home for the summer, I found a church that had a pastor who was ex-Mormon. The more we talked, the more I realized what it was that I wanted to do. I sent a letter to the Bishop and Stake President in my home town, and also to the one in Moscow- requesting to be excommunicated. I didn't get a reply for a few months, but when I did, it was two letters saying that I needed to meet with the Bishop in my home town in order to have this process done. Eager to sever all ties, I agreed.

When I went into the Bishop's office, I told him the reasons that I wished to be taken off the records of the church. I told him of what I had learned in the past year. He told me that he didn't want to excommunicate me because if I decided to come back it would be a long, hard process- so he wanted to place me on inactive status instead. I told him that I never wanted to come back, and I wasn't going to change my mind. He said that he wanted to give me a book that was written by a General Authority, and he wanted me to read it and pray about it. I refused his offer and asked him if someone gave him a satanic bible and asked him to pray about it- if he would. He said that he wouldn't because he knew that it was wrong, and I told him that he had just proved my point. Also in the meeting, he asked me if I had any questions, so I asked him about the holes that I found in the doctrine of the Mormon church. He didn't really answer any of my questions, but just beat around the bush, and ended with his testimony that he knew the Mormon church was true without a shadow of a doubt. He told me that he wouldn't be able to grant my request to have my records removed until he had talked to the Stake President. It's been over a year now, and this process still hasn't been completed. I don't really care about it, because I know that even if I am put down as being excommunicated, my records will still be there. The thing that matters the most is that I am on God's records, and that is all that matters in His eyes-because when the earth is destroyed-those worldly documents will be destroyed with it.

I am now living a life on fire for God - and that is only by His grace. God is doing some really exciting things in my life now. I still feel the pain of my family's rejection of me. Of the really close Mormon friends that I have told about my decision - only two are still my friends. But God has blessed me with a new family and more friends than I have ever had, and He has also blessed me with His love.

To those of you who have left the Mormon church, and want to give up on God altogether- please don't. There is more to God than you think. I had some bitterness toward God for letting me go through all of that pain and suffering all those years, but He did it for a reason. I have been able to help out several others who are going through this pain, and it helps them out because they know that I know what they are going through. God has a purpose for you, so please don't give up on Him. He didn't give up on you.
 
How 'Protestants' returned to the flock.

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http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0077.html

Pastor and Flock Convert to Catholicism

When Pentecostal minister Alex Jones came into the Church this past Easter he was not alone. He brought much of his congregation in with him.

When Detroit-born Alex Jones became a Pentecostal minister in 1972, there was little question among those who knew him that he was answering God's call to preach.

Now, many of his friends and family have dismissed the 59-year-old pastor as an apostate for embracing the Catholic faith, closing the nondenominational church he organized in 1982, and taking part of his congregation with him.

At this year's April 14 Easter Vigil, Jones, his wife, Donna, and 62 other former members of Detroit's Maranatha Church, was received into the Catholic Church at St. Suzanne's Parish. For Jones, becoming a Catholic will mark the end of a journey that began with the planting of a seed by Catholic apologist and Register columnist Karl Keating. It also will mean the beginning of a new way of life.

Jones first heard Keating, the founder of Catholic Answers, at a debate on whether the origins of the Christian church were Protestant or Catholic. At the close, Keating asked, "If something took place, who would you want to believe, those who saw it or those who came thousands of years later and told what happened?"

"Good point," Jones thought, and tucked it away. Five years later, while he was reading about the church fathers, Keating's question resurfaced. Jones began a study of the Church's beginnings, sharing his newfound knowledge with his congregation.

To illustrate what he was talking about, in the spring of 1998 he re-enacted an early worship service, never intending to alter his congregation's worship style. "But once I discovered the foundational truths and saw that Christianity was not the same as I was preaching, some fine-tuning needed to take place."

Soon, Maranatha Church's Sunday service was looking more like a Catholic Mass with Pentecostal overtones. "We said all the prayers with all the rubrics of the Church, all the readings, the Eucharistic prayers. We did it all, and we did it with an African-American style."

Not everyone liked the change, however, and the 200-member congregation began to dwindle. Meanwhile, Jones contacted Detroit's Sacred Heart Seminary and was referred to Steve Ray of Milan, Mich., whose conversion story is told in Crossing the Tiber.

"I set up a lunch with him right away and we pretty much had lunch every month after that," said Ray. He introduced Jones to Dennis Walters, the catechist at Christ the King Parish in Ann Arbor, Mich. Walters began giving the Pentecostal pastor and his wife weekly instructions in March, 1999.

CROSSROADS

Eventually, Jones and his congregation arrived at a crossroads. On June 4, the remaining adult members of Maranatha Church voted 39-19 to begin the process of becoming Catholic. In September, they began studies at St. Suzanne's.

Maranatha closed for good in December. The congregation voted to give Jones severance pay and sell the building, a former Greek Orthodox church, to the First Tabernacle Church of God in Christ.

Father Dennis Duggan, St. Suzanne's 53-year-old pastor, said the former Maranatha members and their pastor along with about 10 other candidates comprise the 750-member parish's largest-ever convert class.

UNITY AND DIVERSITY

Although not all parishioners at predominantly white St. Suzanne's have received the group warmly, Father Duggan, who also is white, said he considers the newcomers a gift and an answer to prayer.

"What the Lord seems to have brought together in the two of us — Alex and myself — is two individuals who have a similar dream about diversity. Detroit is a particularly segregated kind of community, especially on Sunday morning, and here you've got two baptized believers who really believe we ought to be looking different."

Father Duggan hopes eventually to bring Jones onto the parish staff. Already, he has encouraged Jones to join him in teaching at a Wednesday night Bible service. And, he is working on adapting the music at Masses so that it better reflects the parish's new makeup.

The current European worship style at St. Suzanne's has been the most difficult adjustment for the former Maranatha members, Jones said, because they had been accustomed to using contemporary music with the Catholic prayers and rituals. "The cultural adaptation is far more difficult than the theological adaptation," he said.

PROTESTANT ISSUES

Jones said the four biggest problems Protestants have with Catholicism are teachings about Mary, purgatory, papal authority, and praying to saints. He resolved three of the four long ago, but struggled the most with Mary, finally accepting the teaching on her just because the church taught it.

"It is so ingrained in Protestants that only God inhabits heaven and to pray to anyone else is idolatry. ... The culture had so placed in my heart that only the Trinity received prayer that it was difficult."

He is writing a paper on the appropriateness of venerating Mary for a class at Detroit's Sacred Heart Seminary, where he is taking prerequisite courses for a master's degree in theology and pastoral studies. He also is writing a book for Ignatius Press and accepting speaking engagements through St. Joseph Communications, West Covina, Calif.

Jones, the father of three married sons and grandfather of six, is leaving the question of whether he becomes a priest up to the Church.

"If the Church discerns that vocation, I will accept it. If not, I will accept that, too. Whatever the Church calls me to do, I will do."

Although he has given up his job, prestige, and the congregation he built to become Catholic, Jones said the hardest loss of all has been the family and friends who rejected him because of his decision.

"To see those that have worshiped with and prayed with me for over 40 years walk away and have no contact with them is sad."

It was especially painful, he said, when his mother, who had helped him start Maranatha, left to go to Detroit's Perfecting Church, where his cousin, gospel singer Marvin Winans, is the pastor.

Neither Winans nor the pastor of the church that bought Maranatha's building would comment on Jones' conversion. Jones also is troubled that those he left behind do not understand his decision.

"To them, I have apostasized into error. And that's painful for me because we all want to be looked at as being right and correct, but now you have the stigma of being mentally unbalanced, changeable, being looked at as though you've just walked away from God."

Jones said when his group was considering converting, prayer groups were formed to stop them. "People fasted and prayed that God would stop us from making this terrible mistake. When we did it, it was as though we had died."

He said Catholics do not fully understand how many Protestants see their church. "There's this thin veneer of amicability, and below that there is great hostility."

But he remains convinced he is doing the right thing.

"How can you say no to truth? I knew that I would lose everything and that in those circles I would never be accepted again, but I had no choice," he said.

"It would be mortal sin for me to know what I know and not act on it. If I returned to my former life, I would be dishonest, untrustworthy, a man who saw truth, knew truth, and turned away from it, and I could just not do that."
 
people change beliefs all the time, political, sexual, and religion. not a big deal. any type of faith is important i believe, no matter if you believe in allah, god, jesus, whatever it does for you. belief is what gets you through the day
 
unico said:
i'm eager to see what the next step is
:corn:
Click to expand...

How a 'Catholic' became Jewish.

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http://www.hillel.org/about/news/2007/feb/converting_2007Feb23.htm

When, during a winter 2004 Taglit - birthright israel trip, Kyley McClain became a bat mitzvah at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, she shared the honor with four other University of Rochester students. But unlike them, a few weeks before the trip, McClain emerged from a Rochester mikvah, a Jew-by-choice.

Her journey to Judaism began as a little girl growing up in New Jersey. “Most of my friends growing up were Jewish,” she says.

And while she spent Shabbat dinners with her Jewish friends and sometimes joined them in Hebrew school, she “always felt like an outsider.”

During her freshman year at Rochester she decided to attend Rosh Hashanah services at the Hillel. “And I went from there,” says McClain.

She took Judaism classes at local synagogues, learned to read Hebrew and attended Conservative and Modern Orthodox services.

“My life changed after the mikvah,” says McClain, who today is the program director at the University of Rochester Hillel. “Things have fit into place.”

Converting to Judaism while a student in college, and not, say, for marriage, is becoming increasingly common, observe Hillel rabbis.

“The biggest surprise for me as a Hillel rabbi is the volume of students interested,” says Rabbi Amy Idit Jacques of Ohio State University Hillel. “Just from two years ago to this year, the number of students who approach me about conversion has increased.”

While it is not easy to substantiate why there might be an increase in college students converting to or interested in Judaism, some rabbis believe they seek conversion as a protest against the rise of fundamental Christianity.

However, another reason might be the increasing number of college students, who are raised in intermarried homes, and who are trying to redefine their Jewish identity.

“My mom is a practicing Catholic, but I was raised a Reform Jew,” says Hofstra University junior, Amanda Graber.

Growing up, Graber attended a Reform synagogue, became a bat mitzvah and was president of her Jewish youth group. But when sharing her upbringing with a group of students on a Taglit-birthright israel trip, another student told Graber that according to the laws of the State of Israel, she was not technically Jewish.

“I cried,” says Graber. “I’d never heard that before.”

After a “difficult conversation” with her parents Graber decided to “basically convert to my own religion” and began a path toward an Orthodox conversion.

“It was not easy talking to my parents, I didn’t want to hurt them or make them feel like they didn’t raise me Jewish enough,” says Graber.

But then there are students like Arizona State University senior Benjamin Riccardi, a former altar boy, who grew up Episcopalian. Riccardi’s theological questions started in high school, he says, and he started attended Friday night services at a nearby Reform synagogue. When he arrived at ASU, he became involved with the campus Hillel and started learning with Reform rabbis in town. He completed his conversion during his junior year. After graduation, Riccardi is planning a year of Jewish learning in Jerusalem, before applying to rabbinical school.

However, some Hillel rabbis doubt the developmental readiness of college students to formally proceed with Jewish conversion. Rabbi Mychal Copeland of Stanford University Hillel does not encourage undergraduates to complete the official conversion process before they graduate.

“It’s a lifelong commitment. By its nature college is a period of transition and temporary. And the college community is not permanent,” says Copeland. “There’s no rush to convert. If the students feel there is a rush it’s a red flag.”

And not all Hillel rabbis feel conversion is even within their jurisdiction or job description.

“I see myself as an educator and a counselor,” says Rabbi Avi Orlow of St. Louis Hillel. And he won’t serve on a student’s beit din, a religious court used in the conversion process, where there might be the possibility of judgment.

“My role is to answer questions and to steer potential converts to a congregational rabbi,” agrees Rabbi Aaron Spiegel of Butler University Hillel. “I believe converting through a community is very important.”

When his “lack of being able to identify with Christianity” brought Tony Rodriguez, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, to explore Judaism, he began taking Jewish studies classes at the university. Three years later he formally converted at a local Reform congregation in Milwaukee.

Each student who chooses conversion to Judaism has a unique story. But most agree that what attracted them to Judaism was the accepting nature of the Jewish community on their campuses.

And while Riccardi admits to being tripped up by cultural references -- like Yiddish expressions and the meaning of the word “lox” -- most importantly he says, “Now, I’m counted in the minyan.”
 
How a minor became and adult.

How a man became a woman.

Everything's possible. But one homosexual becoming a heterosexual of course proves that real homosexuals can't exist.
 
Possibly not, a deterministic universe removes the possibility of free will, science will settle that philisophical question.
 
I don't care, I decide for myself. :) If everything is steered, at least it doesn't come and tell me something.
 
"Jews For Allah"? Was that a joke, or does such a group really exist?? Wow....
 
People are always changing their point of view. I did. I converted to Catholicism from Protestantism. This person became a Protestant after being Mormon.
 
You sure?
Click to expand...

You know, you're right BVS. You can't really trust what's in the textbooks.

Although I really like the 'idea' of america, I'm not willing to fight in combat for it, and I begrudgingly pay taxes, and never vote. I figure, what's the point anyway?
 
But I thought people were originally being sent from Europe to explore the "New World" for the sole purpose of bringing back goods?
Click to expand...

Right, all new textbooks have corrected it as such. It was always about exploitation. We just lucked out with the whole 'freedom and rights' stuff.
 
MadelynIris said:


Right, all new textbooks have corrected it as such. It was always about exploitation. We just lucked out with the whole 'freedom and rights' stuff.
Click to expand...

No, I'm completely serious here, not trying to argue with you. Spain, England, etc. all originally came to this side of the globe for the purpose of bringing back riches. You said above that freedom of religion was what the USA was founded upon. But it was actually "founded" by people looking to bring back unique goods to market and increase their wealth. We did learn about that in the textbooks. Although, often some are written in such a way to steal the glory of the Jamestown colony and claim that the Plymouth Rock colony was the first solid colony...but...that's for another discussion.
 
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