Pure Doctrine

When Ismael Ezequiel Polanco Almonte was eight years old, he wondered about God. He remembered his father reading a scripture from the New Testament book of James, promising that those who lacked wisdom could “ask of God” (James 1:5). Those words filled his heart, and he never forgot them. When he was alone in his bedroom, he asked God if the church he was attending was the right one. Ismael expected an immediate answer, but it didn’t come.

While he was growing up, Ismael attended many churches, but his confusion only grew. Every church contradicted the others, and Ismael could find no one to give him direct answers to his questions about the nature of God. He finally decided there was no answer.

“I began doing things that some modern youth do,” Ismael said. “Each week I sank further and further into darkness because my decisions weren’t the best.” He felt his bad habits were distancing him from his family, who had always supported him. Once again, the desire came to him to ask God. “I am here waiting. I have searched, and I have not found,” he prayed. “Look at me. I am alone. I want to know, but I don’t know how to find You.” In that moment, he felt his chest burn “as strong as if a volcano were inside of me. I couldn’t control the tears. I knew it was an answer to my question.”

At school that afternoon, a friend invited Ismael to early-morning seminary. His friend explained that it was a class where he and other youth of his church studied the scriptures. Ismael told him he would go, knowing inside it was the answer to his prayer. The next morning, he woke up at 5:30 a.m. and went to the branch building in Matancita. “I have never felt such a strong feeling of peace,” he said. “Pure doctrine was shared, delicious to a soul that had sought so anxiously.” He continued to attend seminary and went to church every Sunday.

There were no missionaries in his village yet, so Ismael waited a year and a half to be baptized. When the missionaries finally arrived, they taught him the missionary lessons in one week. Ismael was baptized in the ocean near his village. In 2016, looking back on his conversion, he reflected, “I now enjoy the privilege of being not a stranger or foreigner (see Ephesians 2:19) but a brother of all those who have entered in the path of the Lord, the strait and narrow path.”