“I Will Get Rid of Them,” Liahona, Sept. 2005, 39–40
I Will Get Rid of Them
I was 20 years old and had spent most of my life as a member of my parents’ church. But for three years I had not gone to church because I was considering other religious and moral philosophies—although none of them felt right to me.
One day when I arrived at my parents’ house, my brother and my best friend were there. They said some young women had come to visit and had left a book with my brother. My brother had asked my best friend to be at the house when they came back. He wanted him to be the one to tell them not to come anymore.
But when the missionaries returned, my friend said, “Come back in three days because I want to hear the discussions.”
My brother was furious. I asked my friend what he had been thinking, and he just said, “Well, they are very beautiful, and they have a nice way of talking about Jesus Christ.”
“Well, I will get rid of them,” I replied arrogantly.
Two weeks went by without my being able to do so. They were now visiting my brother and my sister and many of my friends. They were surrounding me on all sides, and I didn’t even know who was responsible for what felt like an ambush.
The following week, my brother told me that two of my friends had already been baptized and that another was going to be baptized that Sunday. I agreed to go to church on Sunday just to see my friend’s baptism. “But this is crazy,” I said to myself.
That Sunday I finally met the two missionaries who had been giving me so many headaches. At the end of the baptismal service they came up to me, gave me a Book of Mormon, and invited me to hear the first discussion. On the inside I was resisting and shouting, “No!” But on the outside I was crying, and I said, “Yes,” to all their invitations.
A week later, there I was watching another of my friends be baptized. And on the following Sunday, my best friend and I also entered the waters of baptism.
Almost a month went by. I felt a need not just to believe, but to know for sure that these things were true. One Sunday morning I decided not to go to church but to go somewhere else and pray. I headed toward a hill about six miles (9 km) from the city. When I got there I found a place off the beaten path where I could be at peace. After almost an hour of reading the Book of Mormon, pondering, praying for an answer, and intending to stay there until I received one, something strange started happening. I felt a desire to go to church. My heart was beating rapidly. That was my answer.
Almost in spite of myself, I got on my bicycle, returned to the city, and got to the meetinghouse as quickly as I could. To my great surprise, the meetings were just starting.
Ever since then I have known that this is the true gospel of Jesus Christ and that this is His Church. It’s a message I shared as a full-time missionary, trying to be the same kind of missionary as those sisters I couldn’t get rid of.