I'm writing this letter as a testimony to the atheists, agnostics, and Mormons. God has shown me through Christ that he is alive and well, and is very much a part of his peoples lives. We just have to allow him in and let him take over from there. Although I am still learning, I have come to realize that I am better off just letting him guide me through his spirit. Here is my story of my relationship with God so far. Of course I will only inscribe the high lights of how this came to be, otherwise this would become as long as any novel on the market.

     I was raised as a Mormon living with my father and Stepmother in Utah until I was thirteen. I still remember much of the religion, especially the fast and testimony meetings. As an eight to thirteen year old I still remember getting up and bearing my testimony, even though I had no idea that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, or that the Book of Mormon was the word of God. From where I am now I can really see how these meetings help this church. Nearly all of the testimonies were the same. It didn't matter if you were ten years old or forty years old, the format for the testimonies was the same. As a Christian I see a major difference, every testimony is different. This shows me that God really is dynamic and is a part of men's everyday life. If everybody you met told you the same exact story of their relationship with God, it would make you wonder if they were programmed to say this.

     Nevertheless I moved in with my Mom when I was thirteen. She was in no way Mormon, and blamed the divorce with my dad on this religion. According to her, everything was going fine until my dad decided to return to his childhood religion. She refused to be baptized and the only way out was divorce. I lived with my mom until sixteen when I moved in with some roommates in Las Vegas. Mom was an alcoholic and I was fed up with moving every time she wouldn't face reality. I ended up working for my uncle in Miami Florida for my senior year of high school.

     Florida is where I met Fred (actual name). He had worked for my uncle for years, usually at the job sites, installing stone work. During a stint when we were busier in the workshop than Fred was at the job sites, he worked with us to get us caught up. During this time he listened to Christian radio every day, and really encouraged and helped the other workmen to attend church or straighten out their lives. Looking back it was awesome watching the effect he would have on people, and turn them around for the better.

     I started asking Fred questions about his beliefs and about Christ. I had forgotten most of what I had learned as a Mormon, but there were things that were ingrained into my memory, like who God was. Sometimes I would ask a question relating to something I had learned as a Mormon and he would give me a strange look and ask where I had heard that. Needless to say he asked me to pray and give my life to Christ. He also gave the NASB version and instructed me to read the bible starting with the New Testament. I instantly found myself glued to the book, and every day after work I would rush home to read it. I finished it in three months and started over. At the time I thought it was funny that Fred would never tell me what church he went too. I asked him a hundred or so times, but he would always tell me to find a church that teaches the bible and the bible only. He explained that God didn't want me to join a religion or church, but wanted a relationship with him. He also told me that if anybody told me I had to join this church or that church in order to be saved; they were the ones to stay away from. Now after knowing God for almost eight years, I can see why he never told me what church he went to. It did not matter. Most churches cannot comprehend this. The important part is coming to know Christ, not joining a religion. To this day I still do not know what church Fred attended.

     At this time I was getting close to graduating high school and was looking forward to college. My dad had talked me into coming to school in Utah, as it was much cheaper to live and pay tuition in Utah. Dad also asked me to read the Book of Mormon and to pray to see if it was true. I told Fred I was moving to Utah and that I was going to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. He told me that I had already found Christ and did not need any other book besides the bible to help in this relationship. Nevertheless I moved to Utah shortly after graduating high school.

     Upon arriving to Utah my dad gave me the Book of Mormon and asked me to pray about it. I read it in about five months and continued to pray about it . I attended the institute of Mormon religion for church services every Sunday. All five of my roommates were returned missionaries and they went with me. During the summer of 92 I worked for a contractor doing small remodeling jobs. Three other employees and I became roommates. They were all Christian and tried to talk me out of going to the Mormon church, but I kept telling them I needed to find out the truth for myself. This is where it started getting weird.

     The contractor we worked for was entangled with the IRS and ended up leaving town. I moved out and worked at a local factory where I met a girl (Becky) whom I had known while in elementary school. I don't know how we got on the subject but she told me how her family had left the church and why. The next day she brought me a book to read "The Bible Infallible and Forever" and "The Mormon Illusion". I took the book more out of being nice than really wanting to read it. I left it in the back seat of my car and forgot about reading it. About this time I decided to go on a mission for the Mormon church. Everybody had told me that I would gain a testimony on my mission, and should go instead of wait to find out if it was true first. I'm sure that most missionaries that had doubts will tell you the same story. They were told that they would gain a testimony on their mission if they didn't already have one. I thought I would go one more quarter of school and then get prepared for my mission.

     At this point is when my life just fell apart. I totaled my car in an accident two weeks before I had paid it off and one week after I had taken it off full coverage insurance. I decided to put off school for one more quarter to pay for a new car. I was able to get another car, but it overheated the fourth week I bought it and it warped the cylinder head. No problem I thought; I can still drive to work. I had been laid off from the factory and it was the slowest time of the year in Utah. I could only get temporary jobs that would barely feed me. Then the starter went out in the new piece of junk and it was $120.00 for the import starter. No problem I thought; I can walk to work when I find a job. The first day I walked eight hours and my knee gave out on me. This all happened in the course of two months after I decided to go on a mission. So here I was limping everywhere, jobless, and getting desperate.

     Seek and you shall find. I began to get angry with God, wondering why I was going through all this. Finally around Christmas I decided to pick up the book that Becky had given me and read it. I stayed up all night and early into the next morning reading this book and looking up the scriptures it referenced. The next day I finished and I lay on my bed stunned at what I had read. I knew then that God had been using the roommates during the summer and Becky to give me my answer. I'm curious what the odds are that a person could live with three Christian roommates in Utah, especially since nearly every other roommate I have had was a R.M.. I just couldn't see the answer right in front of my face, and it seemed God had to wake me up.

     The author of the book had mentioned asking God for a verse and opening his bible to find the answer. I asked God to give me a verse and tell me what to do next. I flipped open the bible and my eyes rested on 2 Kings 20:5, "Return and say to Hezekiah the leader of My people, "Thus says the Lord, the God of your father David, I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord.". I immediately remembered that the day before I had walked by a First Baptist church and had noticed a sign outside that said Wednesday night bible study. I had wondered just who would want to go to church on a Wednesday night. I also knew that Wednesday is the third day of the week. There are a lot of people that would say it is a nice coincidence, but this isn't all. The next week I had gotten a job at a local auto parts store, where they set me up with an account to buy a new starter and get my car running. It seemed everything was looking up from there.

     Now to show that this verse wasn't a coincidence, a month later I just happened to be driving around town when I saw a full size four-wheel drive Ford pickup. I thought to myself it would be nice to ask God for a truck like that, but we aren't supposed to ask for material things, and also I doubted that the word Ford could be found in the bible. That night before I went to bed I asked God for a verse. I flipped open the bible and the first verse my eyes rested upon was Ezekiel 47:5 "Again he measured a thousand; and it was a river that I could not ford, for the water had risen, enough water to swim in, a river that could not be forded.". Whoa this is getting strange I thought. I pretty much forgot about the verse until the next month.

     I was a member of the National Guard and so was my apartment manager from the previous year. The current managers knew we were in the same unit and asked me to tell the him to get rid of the truck he had left on the property for ten months. The night before guard, I again asked God for a verse and I turned to the same one. The next day I told him he needed to get rid of his truck. In order to save himself hauling it away he told me that if I could start it, I could have it. I'm sure he would have given it to me whether or not it started. Needless to say I took a look at it after I got home. I noticed the battery had broken loose and was chewed up on one side from the fan blade. I took the battery out of my car and bolted it into the truck. It started right up. By the way it was a Ford truck. Now I know it wasn't even close to the truck I had seen on the street a month earlier, but I think God was telling me anything was possible. Could all of this be a coincidence?

     A few months later I attended a meeting for the auto parts store and had volunteered to fix the water fountain after some employees complained about it being broken. I had gotten home that evening and wondered what I had gotten myself into. I had not touched plumbing since high school and was then only a plumbers helper. I asked God for a verse. Again the verse my eyes rested upon was Nehemiah 4:23, "The temple servants living in Ophel made repairs as far as the front of the Water Gate toward the east and the projecting tower.". Now this is talking about repairs to a water gate, but I was drinking out of the water fountain at work two days later.

     Verses aren't the only way I have received answers to my questions. I have found that if I ask for a verse and expect one, God probably won't give me one. I was watching an evangelist one night on TV and I was rather depressed that I was stuck in Utah and had put off school for so long. He mentioned that God had a purpose for all of us and we just needed to trust in him. Angrily I spoke to the TV; You're just an old preacher and don't know me, so how do you know he has a purpose for me? He then turned to the TV audience and exclaimed that "I may just be an old preacher, but I'll tell you that God has a purpose for every one of you out there". My jaw just dropped.

     I am now a senior at the University of Utah majoring in Civil Engineering. Ask and you shall receive. While driving around town with my wife one day I told her that somebody needed to put the bible on tape. Since I had gone back to school I found it hard to find time to read the bible. We managed college apartments and the next day a student skipped without paying the rest of his rent. When we walked into his room I noticed all the garbage he had left and on the middle of his bed was the "Bible on Tape". What a blessing, I went on a twelve hour road trip the next weekend to visit a perspective college and listened to the tapes the whole way. I could go on and on with all of these accounts, but it would take a lot of paper.

     What I'm getting at is that God is a part of my life and he has helped bring me out of Mormonism. I have had missionaries tell me that it was Satan that gave me the verses, this because I had decided to go on a mission. This was his ploy to get me away from the truth. Now after looking at Mormonism and all the problems with the religion, such as masonry, polygamy, the afterlife etc. I am glad that God turned me around. I have had probably ten to twenty people try to convert me since I have lived in Utah (one of the great blessings of living in Utah), and recently had a gentlemen ask me how all the people could have died and suffered crossing the plains if Mormonism wasn't true. I thought about it and asked him if I should have joined David Koresh and his followers, seeing as they also chose to die for what they believed in.

     I think that all christians have doubts about who God is, or if they are really on the right track. I have doubts once in awhile also, but if I look at my past and what God has shown me I lose all the doubts. The first question I ask myself is; Is there a God? I look at the verses and other answers I have received and I am forced to answer yes. I am not lucky enough to win a free coke from looking under the cap, let alone receive all these answers. Do I believe in the true God? First I would like to comment on the New Age answer to this questions. This could also be directed to the agnostics. Their answer would be that any god you worship is the true god. As long as your are happy with your god, it must be your true god. That doesn't even make sense. If their is a God, and only one, and if you do not worship this God, then you are worshipping nothing. I don't care how many feelings get hurt; that's life. If it didn't matter which god I worshipped, then when I decided to go on a mission I would have gone. Instead there was an outside force pulling me back. I have never encountered anything like this before in my life. And since I have become a Christian it occurs quite often. So then I must ask myself why is this thing keeping me from following the Mormon religion. There are only two answers. Either it was something trying to keep me from the truth or it was guarding me against believing in something false. After studying Mormonism and Joseph Smith, I have found that Mormonism is not true. I don't care how many times I hear the same testimony over and over again, it doesn't help it become any more true.

     So there we have it folks, in a nutshell. I know that no Christian has ever been able to live up to Christ's standards perfectly, but that is what he died for. I am no different then a myriad of other Christians out there that have Christ as a part of their lives. I sin every day in some way or another. I am always sticking my foot in my mouth, or kicking myself in the pants. There is nothing that I have done to deserve the relationship I have had with God. If I had gotten what I deserved, I would have been squashed like a bug a long time ago. What I am getting at, is that it really is grace and a free gift from God. I have noticed that if I just trust in God and let him lead the way, everything works out for the better. I may not see it at the moment and I look back all the time wondering why I didn't just wait and do it Gods way. This relationship has little to do with feelings, but is much more tangible. I didn't get a good feeling from reading a book. I honestly doubt that feelings have anything at all to do with leading people to the truth. Following our feelings seems to lead us into bad choices. Instead I have found that God will speak through many avenues. I pray that any one that reads this letter may come to enjoy the blessings associated with knowing the true God. I hope that I have raised some questions, and I pray that these questions are answered through a relationship with God.