🌊 I Got BAPTIZED • My Bizarre LDS Conversion Story

[Music] good morning I'm David welcome to week one of a new chapter of 52 churches in 52 weeks round three so today is going to be different it has already been very different because I'm opening up a new door and getting baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ the Latter Day Saints conversion has never been on my business go card when I first started all these different Church visits um I was very content being Protestant um I was very comfortable uh in non-denominational type of churches um church membership from my P from my past I've always been hurt by that so I always have empathized I've always sympathized with those that have been hurt by a church so to convert uh especially with one like the Church of Jesus Christ the latterday Saints is is it it shocks me quite honestly uh especially with my faith set my faith beliefs uh especially with that Protestant background and just a number of things have happened um in the past year or so that has convinced me that I need to make this move uh when I first started 52 churches in 52 weeks I was a statistic I was just another Millennial that had left the church and I was it just it didn't sit right I was in that spiritual but not religious camp and at first I was trying to find a new church but over time I just kind of became this uh this Wanderer this way Wayfaring Stranger it's like what would happen if you actually went into all these different churches and kind of see for yourself to get just a little bit of a pulse on what church is like whether it's Protestant whether it's Catholic where it's lday Saint Jehovah's Witnesses what have you what is it like and I hope with this channel I've been able to kind of show inside to kind of give a little bit more truth and a little bit more understanding on what it's like to visit as a firsttime visitor for today's baptism um you know I have been thinking a lot about water as of late um I was baptized when I was 21 days old so for me now how to get baptized um under my own agency is very strange because as the various churches I've gone to I've always kind of entertained the idea because when I was baptized as a baby it was the sprinkling of water it's like do I need to be fully immersed is that sprinkling of water as an infant is that okay do I need to get baptized at my own accord I've always had some some difficulty thinking about that but you know I kind of thought I was I was good one of the the things with getting baptized now is like I haven't told many people uh just a a handful of those that are um in my local Ward and I'm learning that there is a lot of fear Associated by doing so because like again I come from this background where you you'd almost would use the Bible more as a hammer than trying to love your neighbor trying to love God and and it's it's one of those things where it's it's hard to for me to tell my family um I there's a lot of unknowns moving forward by doing this and the story that has just been stuck in my head um for the past week has been Peter on the boat and he's walking out to Jesus and one of my biggest fears if I can be completely vulnerable is I fear water I can not swim like when I was like my parents paid for swim lessons for me for 2 years and I just never could do it even in high school I had to take a swimming class and uh the instructor was my high school football coach and he saw me trying to swim and I'll never forget it because he's like Boyce you look like a wounded Rhino drowning in quicksand that's how that's how I am with water so when I think of Peter walking out you're either going to sink or swim you're not going to walk you know so for me to to do this baptism it's like I'm I'm walking out and I feel like I'm I'm going to sink because I can't swim and this is all faith it is such a bizarre feeling to do something like this so this morning um I I've had lot of jitters with this and one thing that that often helps is I'll take a morning walk prayer walks is what I call them and it's like you know Heavenly Father am I making the right decision by doing this and it was strange because if you've been watching my channel you'll know I've had this again sounds silly Cardinals appear to me a very coincidental times I have been talking about this since week 12 with my faith Haven video in that that continued into week 13 with the Church of Jesus Christ the latterday Saints had all kinds of weird type of coincidences happen during that visit especially with the talk and that would continue with different Church visits and I'm not going to go all in depth in this intro here about that but as I'm on my prayer walk taking a few pictures just to kind of see what the morning is like for today because this is such a big moment for myself um a cardinal pops up as a like I couldn't even recognize it it was so bright red I thought it was like someone some balloon had got into the tree and I'm taking video of this and it's just chirping it's just singing and it wouldn't fly away with Cardinals like for week 13 I had seen three in two days that was the most I've ever seen Wisconsin because in this state you just don't see too many Cardinals I I see that one and then I keep walking down the path and then a second one appears on this basketball hoop strange keep walking down see a third one keep walking again see a fourth one and I've never had that many appear to me before so strange I drive home and I can already hear a carel chirping in my backyard again so like I I take my camera out I start recording there's a stray cat running in my backyard and then you see the caral just chirping up in this tree branch so it wouldn't leave so I I go inside shower up dress up and I can still hear it chirping outside my window I go back outside again now the neighbor's dog is looking at me like you you know you got a problem man and I it's still chirping up there you know you hear this right so that in a weird way has kind of calmed some of my fears for this has given me some peace has given me some comfort to to do this so I'm going to start up my engine here I got to get my keys and we're going to take off so so I'll be back back in a little bit [Music] it's not too often where you're going to make a video and for what you're about to say you know that you're that you're about to be crucified online and because I I used to watch content like that and people are going to watch this video and they're going to take out their hammers they're going to pass around the nails and my face and my name and my reputation will all be nailed to this cross and it's a very a very strange mix of emotions especially when everything that you've seen and experienced you're you're convicted to move forward so it's been two days since I got baptized and I posted online on Instagram uh to announce the news and that spread really fast p and with a conversion process again this was never intended um though I had just a lot of genuine curiosity like what is this and you know seeing members seeing the fruits of the various not just the Church of Jesus Christ L of saints but other restoration branches other Book of Mormon believing churches it really forced myself especially from this Protestant background why is this different from what I'm seeing and that's no knock on the the majority of protestant or Evangelical type of churches I'm going to touch base a little bit more on that later but with this conversion process I went through 11 different missionaries um phone calls with various members and then received hundreds and hundreds of messages and I you know as an introvert sometimes I just have to shut down it's like I am so thankful that the the messages really helped and I haven't been able to respond to um some of them uh just because sometimes my inbox just gets so flooded for those that have sent messages if especially for those who follow up thank you very much um that it there's just so much Christlike examples that I've seen while doing this and that's just one part of it as well even just hey thanks I appreciate your story um and then obviously with the YouTube channel just thousands of comments as well uh many that I they fill up so fast I can't even read some of them sometimes so um through the whole process um especially with the missionary lessons and everything like that um I was floored by the patience the kindness the followup um many churches fail miserably in followup and I I think another part of it too uh especially with messages that were sent was the amount of prayers you know the amount of prayers um that were directed uh towards me on this as well so it wasn't just the Church of Jesus Christ the latterday Saints they were members of The Community of Christ The Church of Jesus Christ a bicker tonight group um also the stringi church and you know with many of those churches they were just so deep in conviction and example and in belief and it just really made me Ponder more a part of me with my baptism um I felt felt like I needed a little bit of representation as much as I could to be featured in my baptism so I I'll touch on that a little bit later uh but on the flip side um and this is where there's a stirring of emotions is you know from from my background from this Protestant world my like I still have a Protestant brain that I'm kind of working out right now and um I been forced to question a number of concerns that I have in the Protestant World specifically with the loud voices that are there just just what's happening with that so I think I'll touch on that a little bit later as well but with with my decision to do this um I decided a few months ago and um I was just trying to figure out a date and uh just was kind of figuring out some things one of the interesting things that happened was you know I I've mentioned so many times now with these Cardinal coincidences I haven't seen one in a very long time and you know when some things were falling apart uh last month you know it been months and then suddenly One Flew in front of me uh that I got the video on and that kind of uh that night you know I'm I'm struggling with some thoughts and I I pray about the Book of Mormon and just had that overwhelming sensation of peace and I was very psyched because the next week i' would be flying out and doing the Manti Temple open house and you know in Utah there are no Cardinals so I wasn't expecting that and I knew there was all this uproar in the as because when they announced renovation they were planning to remove the murals inside one of which was featured with manura tiger so I was excited to see this but right before manura Tiger's World room we go into the Garden Room and you know you and a number of viewers thank you very much for confirming it because I didn't really believe it even after seeing the red bird in the Garden Room and just that extra godwink through this whole journey um I really kind of solidified things so I was still kind of I had my missionaries kind of come back all right do you have a date and I'm just like waiting on some things but uh Wednesday um I came across some content from um from a YouTube creator that I've had a lot of respect for and he posted a video video that I clicked on and it was talking about Mormonism is this pervasive form of Christianity and I clicked on it and the second word that is mentioned is Hitler and I'm just like I'm done with this I'm done with this and I messaged my missionaries Wednesday afternoon hey could you get me baptized this week again I know this is super late notice and they were Beyond excited so set up the interview on Thursday I think the one interview question that I was stuck on forever was if Joseph Smith was a prophet and it's even weird for me to say yes now because I started to see the need for a seed is kind of how I'm terming this uh that that'll talk more on later and so past the interview process reached out to a few people on Thursday night and Friday meant you know who have helped me and who have shephered me through the process and had the baptism on Saturday so this came about very quickly during this whole process um you know I have witnessed a ton of baptisms and typically you know Evangelical type of churches you know you get baptized in this this pool essentially um but to actually participate in it um I didn't know how much baptism is so vulnerable and just how surreal the experience is um it's not like a Heaven's opening Dove descending type of experience or anything like that uh but but there is an appreciation and for me it's a miracle it even happens forget about me forget about forget about the Church of Jesus Christ the latterday Saints anyone of any church of any denomination who gets baptized like there's there's a little bit of a miracle to be to repent and to be baptized and and for my own um you know for this to be even printed it was it was very intimate and I thought it was perfect I didn't want to make a big thing of this uh maybe 25 Maybe people attended and I was floored at the late notice that even that many people came to attend this and it wasn't even about and the big thing too it's not about me you know it's about Christ how can I how can I take this step to serve Christ so one of the interesting things that the missionaries shared with me is that I could pick the hymns two of them and I found that fascinating because during the whole this whole journey um one thing that really stuck with me was not necessarily the Church of Jesus Christ the latterday Saints but the other restoration branches that also had a role in my appreciation in the Christlike examples that I would see from Book of Mormon believing churches so the first one and I wanted to to have songs and hymns featuring water so when I was in southb Indiana when I was doing the 52 churches um I I came across the Church of Jesus Christ the bicker tonight group and they're they're more Pentecostal they don't have a structure to what songs and hymns that they're going to play you shout them out and one of the the coincidences was one of the first ones I got shouted out was himym 52 and I DEC decited to use that one because the S the hymn is the sea so great Lord my boat so small and the refrain goes the ocean's deep Lord and very wide with many dangers as on I ride so be my captain and be my guide and take me safely across the tide the other one that I asked to play and I've never actually gone to this church but it I heard it at the John Whitmer historic IAL Association where a number of restoration branches attended for this latterday saint conference and the one that I saw it was called there's a tree by a clear running stream and the refrain and I never it was so beautiful to hear this because the women would sing one part of the refrain and then the men would sing the other so it went like yes will cling to the rod that leads to the tree where the Saints will partake of its fruit sweet and free so as I got in the water uh there was still a lot of fear there was still some doubt um but also conviction that I needed to do this and when you get baptized you have to kind of depend on the person that's baptizing you and for the person that I had baptized me um due to privacy I'm not going to share information but uh just Class Act really helped me along on this journey and you kind of depend on him to lift you back up and you have to be fully immersed in the water and you have to go backwards complete surrender the image when I was down the water um that flashed in front of me um I don't know who made this painting or this portrait but it's of Jesus Christ reaching his hand out to grab Simon Peter as he's uh drowning or falling in the water with the faith walk walk and that image just flashed when I was down there so um that that that's an image I'm not going to forget so after the baptism and I posted the news um I I've I've been processing emotions uh because there's a lot of highs there's a lot of lows and I kind of just needed to shut down and process and introvert and numb to a certain extent and um like uh from church members um one one of the really great blessings from this is the amount of excitement uh the congratulations the welcome to the family uh the celebration and it's like I don't I don't need that um it's like I'm super introverted if I'm in a room of people like I'll be in the corner you know I don't need the spotlight the the entire reason I do this channel is I hope I'm doing something to bring people to Christ you know and by showcasing different type of churches if you've been hurt from a church in the past hey here's this one maybe there's a little Glimpse inside maybe this might be something that brings you closer to Christ and I think the messages that helped the most were those from people who mentioned hey because of your channel I'm going back to church because of your channel I'm I'm forming a stronger relationship with Christ uh the best message I got so far I think was hey I'm getting baptized and it wasn't it wasn't a Church of Jesus Christ the Latter-Day Saints type of church it was a different type of mainstream Protestant church and for that I'm Fant like that's fantastic you know um just was really happy to hear that but uh you know on the flip side um and especially as an empath um you get comments from friends who were hurt by this decision because um you know I I've been more neutral with the different type of church visits and I I don't like to attack and it's like I'm trying to see the light inside these churches so to align with one um you know that's that's difficult for me yet um to process and I don't want this to be something where like you you you feel forced that I'm trying to just because of my experience your experience should be the same because we all walk different spiritual paths so the question that that has that hangs over you with a conversion is you begin to question what's the cost and you know what what's what's my family going to think what are my friends going to think uh for a very long time uh I had a few friends who mentioned oh are you turning Mormon now and you know I would joke it's like no no like I'm I'm staked in my beliefs that's not going to happen uh but you know over time something something began to stir the the nails the Hammers the critics they're going to come my they're going to come after me and um that that's something where yeah I'm walking away from what's familiar and what I know and like from a prestant Evangelical side it's much more comfortable and you know I was kind of thinking about you know these nails and Hammers and it's like there's two examples yeah I think in world history when Jesus is hammered to the cross and when Martin Luther hammered the 95 thesis on that account door and there there's so much in the world right now where we're bringing out our Hammer we're nailing Bible passages on other people and there's not enough Good Samaritans out there because I think the majority of churches are good no matter what it's just the loud voices is what is infecting a lot of different churches right now by asking what's the cost obviously the critics well say your soul you know I get it um you start to wonder what am I what am I leaving behind and what is in the future what is moving forward because I don't know you know and um for the first time I guess I have a much better understanding of the disciples when Jesus Christ asked them to drop everything and come follow him and like I'm doing that and this is not the popular decision and I'm sure for the disciples as well when they would do that for Jesus Christ they had to be wondering the same thing like what am I doing why am I following this man what is so different about him and they knew he was the Savior I fought conversion for a very long time as a guy without a wife or kids um it's I'm learning it's it's very difficult to get plugged in to a lot of churches and like there was a number that I reached out to early on when I first started 52 and 52 I reached out to a pastor kind of asking hey I'm doing this church project do you or do you know anyone who could maybe be like a little spiritual advisor for me as I do this and the the response I got was would love to but I'm kind of stretched thin um I would go to other churches where I I would try to get signed up up for Bible studies and some of them would be closed during summer so that never worked um others never got back to me and it there there's this feeling of many churches are just overworked and there's a lot of burnout and there's just not enough time uh to offer certain programs one of the the biggest examples I had I attended One Church Assemblies of God for two years and I had something happen to me that I would not WI on my worst enemy and like I didn't after two years I don't think the pastor knew my name and I reached out called called them got the secretary and was told the pastor's on vacation but he'll get back with you so I never got a phone call back if I did I didn't get a voicemail gave it some time s thought okay well maybe I'll just send an email maybe that'll be easier and never got an email back either and just everything blew up in my life and it's like I'm watching the services on Facebook and it's like they're still going on with the show so with the Church of Jesus Christ the Latter Day Saints one of the knocks on it is it's a high demand religion no one ever talks about the churches where it's a no demand religion you know and as I started to dive more into the Evangelical World um one one situation that I can't forget is what happened with with Francis Chan so if you're not familiar he was a mega church pastor in California just had these amazing illustrative sermons and he built his church from a home Church to 20,000 people and he went on record to basically say hey everyone sees me up on stage utilizing my spiritual gifts but everyone in the audience they're not utilizing theirs no one is using their spiritual gifts so he left his mega church and instead he created a home Church Network maybe five or six families to kind of get away from the current expanding mega church model because you're losing so much Fellowship in that and one fun weird thing I was trying to do after I did my first 52 and 52 is I started researching pastors and what their TW Twitter accounts would look like because you'd have the the picture of the pastor and then you'd have this cover page and like I gone to one mega church Ed Young's church I have a video of my worst Church experience where I got I got coralled in the front row for their Netflix special um got called a stranger danger essentially and just was one of the and then the pastor is talking about Solomon's um bed sheet life if that makes sense and there during his sermon his all his hashtags and his Twitter accounts and his Instagram his Facebook it was plastered throughout the entire sermon I'm like what is this and I I started to find like a lot of today's popular pastors you go on their at their a.com or the Twitter account and there it's just features them selling their books you know and I go through Joyce smile and I go through Joel ostein and Andy Stanley and I just everyone was trying to sell their book or they're trying to se you know sell their marketing their branding what have you and years later I came back to the Church of Jesus Christ Li Saints I kind of wonder what do the what do their church leaders accounts look like and you see President Nelson you see President Oaks you see President iring and every like I know it's corporate but every single image that they have behind them is Jesus Christ and like I I searched through a lot of protestant pastors a lot Evangelical pastors like there's only one that I could find Chuck Swindell who actually had the Bible as part of his social media picture you know and I just always found that um interesting so I was looking online last week and in the Evangelical world it's so weird right now because because the focus so much was on Steven ferdi's pink holy $2,000 sweater that he used to preach for his Easter Service top of that this morning I came across some story uh at this Men's Conference over this weekend in Springfield Missouri where controversial Pastor Mark Driscoll got on stage and had to be removed because this Men's Conference opening um Act was some man swallowing a sord and ripping off his shirt and for me I'm like where's the gospel where's a good sermon like I want to hear the good news why is there so much focus on these stories I wouldn't know otherwise but it's stirring the pot and from a lot of the churches I've gone to now um there is a lot of discussion of YouTube creators uh I'm not going to name a whole lot of names except for one and this past week I came across a video from Alan par Alan par is a very good man and I discovered his content when he first got started eight years ago and I just loved the content that he would have on his website so early on enen par would have videos like can a Christian lose their salvation how to manage stress why do we have four gospels how do you control your mouth like just really good questions to ask but several months ago he had a video basically saying he had to take a step back because a lot of his videos were more focused on sensationalism that was getting all the popularity because he had done a video on Beyonce and her beliefs and I guess some act that was controversial so he got like a million views on that but the other videos where he was focused on Bible study would get like 20 or 30,000 views use and that just was like why why are so many people focused on the you know such a Negative video so he came out with a video basically saying Mormonism is a pervasive form of Christianity and the second word in the video is Hitler and I'm just like I can't do this anymore I cannot do this anymore and that's when I reached out to my missionaries like I need to do this now because I feel in the Evangelical in the Christian world you see so many more videos about false prophets false teachings and there is like right now I feel like there is such a conversion in the Protestant world to sensationalism and trying to find and all these witch hunts all these Pro false propit hunts to attack other people and as a result I'm losing the gospel I'm losing where the Jesus Christ is with how things are currently being preached because all that sensationalism from YouTube creators that is infecting the American church and I've been part of Bible studies now where it's not necessarily what's good Bible study it's what are you watching on YouTube and often alen par and some of these other big content creators that's what gets brought up Saturday morning uh before I saw the five Cardinals uh on my prayer walk uh I headed out um towards this big tree in front of a church uh in my neighborhood I usually walk by or drive by it uh pretty much every day and but I never knew how long that tree was there and uh when I walked by it the term frightfully and wonderfully made comes to mind because this thing is just gigantic and it just looks like like veins the way that the branches reach out and I've always kind of wondered like when did they plant this uh you know with just a single seed so I walked over there and I've seen that this church has been standing there since 1866 uh you know nearly 14 or 160 years I can't do math in my head right now so it's like that that tree had to be planted there in that year trees it's it's interesting because when my life had fallen apart you know I wasn't getting the phone calls back from that Assemblies of God Pastor uh I meditated on Psalm 1 for the longest time and like the passage that go it goes He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit and its season whose Leaf also shall not wither and whatever he does shall prosper and I was taking a walk uh where I grew up and you know the way that the sun was in the sky with this radiating sun going down in this purplish sky and I came across this River and this tree and it was the fall so it's you know the the leaves were kind of leaving at that point but it was just such a beautiful image that it was like God was kind of speaking to me in that moment with Psalm 1 at the Forefront of my mind so trees have always in the symbolism have always really resonated with me and so with the beginning of Genesis towards the end of Revelation it the Bible begins and ends with a tree in the very center is Jesus Christ on a tree that man had mutilated into the cross and we nailed him up on that so the first time I was reading the book of Mormon and to hear lehi's dream and the tree and partaking of the fruit that always um that that story resonated with me if the Book of Mormon was indeed true and I feel with this conversion process I could see the fruits of church members and but the question I had was is the Book of Mormon true and you can't see that because with this tree you can't see the seed you know and that's kind of the the whole thing with the Book of Mormon and I think with this whole process I'm starting to see that seed it has to be true and that's so weird for me to say but I'm just like what I feel like Jesus Christ is that seed inside and maybe it's not necessarily the Book of Mormon but Jesus Christ is in that and for me I need to take the next step I need to uh take this Covenant path I need to walk through this to see where this treade leads to and I and again there's a lot of fear there's you know I'm going to be attacked I need to do this before I wrap this up uh one thing that really kind of started to change my heart during this whole conversion process was my first temple open house visit um I just learned you know just a little while earlier from my dad that my great-grandfather was Mormon and it it dived in for me like I started dive into ancestry and went to my local board learned a little bit more I leave and immediately a cardinal flies in front of me again another coincidental time and the very first thing at the temple open house is you see a video and they played the video and it had a Elder Holland talking about heaven and how like he just couldn't see it being heaven without his wife Patricia and around that time uh his wife Patricia had just passed away and you know I had mentioned um you know I was praying for him um during such a difficult time and I was sent this uh Patricia Holland quote uh from someone that really helped me with this journey and it said coincidence is a small miracle in which God chooses to remain anonymous and last week was General Conference he got up there to have the very first talk at General Conference and it was just it was such a powerful talk for what he's come from and especially to hear uh to hear him talk about his wife and since her passing and and what he's been through since and then to just deliver such a strong message you know with all these Cardinal coincidences and over the past two years for myself these small coincidences these Small Miracles um and especially the strange timing I'm sure there's something very scientific why five Cardinals were you know in the morning some April day as everything is blooming I'm sure there's that but just the timing and to see that and since like had a number of ancestors that have had Temple work done so to me it it kind of like it felt a little bit like uh ancestors had arrived to say thank you you know for everything that had been done and that uh this step forward with baptism was the right choice so my coincidence wasn't flying away that morning and you know sometimes God likes to get creative to catch our attention

Channel: 52 Churches in 52 Weeks

Views: 79,417

Keywords: 52 churches in 52 weeks, manti temple, david boice, church of jesus christ of latter-day saints, hello saints, stick of joseph, scripture central, david alexander, saints unscripted, ward radio, church newsroom, book of mormon, book of mormon central, lds, byu, unshaken, general conference, christian homestead, scriptureplus, followhim, preparing for zion, cwic media, spiritual survival, mormon stories, alyssa grenfell, nemo the mormon, come follow me, mormon book reviews

Id: 7ubHm2wMQMk

Length: 43min 28sec (2608 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2024