Saved

By Tim Heavrin

I was raised in a Christian home, but we were never very active in our church. It wasn’t until I went into the army in 1978 that I began to study the Bible. I learned to love this wonderful book, but I somehow sensed that something was missing.

I searched for that missing link through nine years of active duty, looking at as many Christian faiths as I could. But I found myself going nowhere. I stopped searching when I left active duty and enrolled in the University of Maine at Machias.

Adjustment to civilian life was excruciatingly difficult, even though I was in the reserves. In the three years that followed, I began to feel a deep and lonely emptiness.

One day I received a phone call from a friend who was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She had graduated from UMM and moved to Utah. During her call, I dumped my troubles on her. She asked if I would like a copy of the Book of Mormon, and I said why not.

A week later the book arrived. My friend had highlighted some verses, and I started reading them. As soon as I did, my hands began to shake, though I was not sure why. Then I got to Moroni 10:3–5 and wham! It hit me like a high-explosive artillery shell. I had found my missing link! It wasn’t long before I was baptized.

My branch president warned me that the adversary would make a run at me now that I was a Latter-day Saint. I had no doubt that he was right, but I was not prepared for the magnitude of Satan’s full-scale assault. Without going into detail, I’ll just say that I came close to ending not only my membership in the Church, but my life as well.

It was while I was on annual training with my army reserve unit in Gagetown, New Brunswick, Canada, just as the Persian Gulf Crisis was getting underway, that I reached my lowest ebb. I was on guard duty at around 2:00 A.M., and I had all but decided to end it all. The sky was clear, and I looked up to heaven.

“Is this church really true?” I asked.

The answer came quietly, but it changed my life. More than that, it saved my life. I took a new look at the Book of Mormon and decided that it was not only my missing link, but my lifeline as well.

Life is still far from easy, but the Book of Mormon helps keep me going.