Converted on a Cross

By Mark Layton

When my mother arranged for our family to audition for the Mesa Arizona Easter pageant, she never guessed that her 20-year-old son would be cast as an angel. But two weeks after auditions, I was wearing an enormous, floor-length, white satin costume with huge draping sleeves and practicing modified ballet moves as the choreographer called, “Now gracefully sweep your right arm to the left, right crossover with the leg, and raise both arms up elegantly.”

I would be turning 21 shortly, and a mission was somewhere in the distance. When I became “number 434” at the auditions, I didn’t suspect that this pageant would change those undefined plans.

Shortly after I became a dancing angel, a director informed me of a “slight modification.” She told me she had been awakened several times the night before with a dream that number 434 should be a thief on the cross, not an angel. I willingly switched my white dress for a loincloth and shorts.

By opening night, every line and song had become routine to me. As I climbed on my cross and slipped my arms into the rope restraints before the crucifixion scene, I thought casually, “It’s show time.”

But during the eight performances in which I hung next to the actor portraying Jesus Christ, something began to happen in my heart. As the lightning and thunder depicted the end of His earthly mission, the story of Jesus that I had known since Primary was becoming real to me. I felt the Savior’s love like the night air around me. With that understanding as a catalyst, I sent in my mission papers the next month and soon received a call to the Canada Toronto Mission.

Although I never played the role of an angel, it took another kind of angel, my mother, to help me change my life through the Easter pageant. Since the pageant and during my mission, the scriptures have come alive to me as I receive continual witnesses of the reality of my Savior’s life.

• Mark Layton is a member of the Mesa 70th Ward, Mesa Arizona East Stake.