“My Awakening to Truth,” Liahona, Dec. 2001, 32
My Awakening to Truth
I was born in 1964 near Paris to parents who helped me gain a basic understanding of Christianity. I remember one Sunday in particular when I was seven. On our way to church, my mother talked to me about Jesus Christ. As she described Him, I felt I had known Him for a long time. That was the beginning of my testimony—although it lay dormant for a time.
As the years passed, my parents stopped practicing their religion, and I became an atheist. I thought it beneath me to believe in God.
One day when I was 17, I was sitting alone, looking out the window. For some reason, I suddenly began to believe in God again. At the time I was not interested in religion, but there came into my heart a conviction that God did actually exist.
A week later my family moved to Clermont-Ferrand in central France. I began asking myself some difficult questions: What is Jesus like? What is my relationship to Him? One afternoon some young men gave me a paper that read: “Who is Jesus? Come to the Christian pub to discuss this question with other young people.” I told the young men that I had been asking myself that very question. I said I would stop by soon.
The next day I decided to go to the Christian pub. But as I walked up to it, I couldn’t bring myself to enter. In the days that followed, I went back several times, but for some reason I was afraid to go inside.
My inability to enter the pub left me feeling sad. I didn’t know what to do. But after I came home from one of my uncompleted trips, the thought came to me that Jesus Christ organized His Church almost 2,000 years ago; therefore that Church must exist today. As soon as the idea entered my mind, the doorbell rang. I opened the door and saw two missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints standing there. I was surprised—not by their sudden appearance at my door, but by my reaction. I felt as though I had been waiting for them.
Because my room was in disorder, I felt embarrassed to have the missionaries come in, so I asked where they held meetings. The following Sunday I attended church at the address they gave me. What I learned of Jesus Christ and of my relationship to Him felt right. I was soon baptized. I have always believed the Spirit converted me to the gospel before the missionaries ever contacted me.
About a year after my baptism, I became less active for a while as I served in the French army, but I never lost my testimony. After leaving the army, I became active again and obtained my patriarchal blessing. I received the Melchizedek Priesthood, served a full-time mission to New Caledonia, and later married.
I continue to have difficulties in my life. But I find the strength to endure by remembering how the Lord prepared me to hear the truth and how, at age seven, I received my first testimony through the power of the Holy Ghost. I’ve been amazed and grateful ever since for the many confirmations I’ve received of that first witness of the Spirit.
Detail from Christ and the Rich Young Ruler, by Heinrich Hofmann
Illustrations by Brian Call