Mormon Church

Personal Response by Todd

“I know the Church is true…” I’ve heard the phrase many times growing up in the Mormon Church. Thousands of members of the Church say those words each day and millions each year. When I was in high school I started to doubt. I didn’t remember ever having spiritual experiences like so many talked about. It was hard to believe that my family and friends were really experiencing what they claimed. I grew up in South East Texas where the Mormon Church was a minority. I remember wanting so desperately to fit in, to be just one of the guys. However, one day as I was with a group of friends, I felt a powerful impression to befriend another kid at school who no one talked with. It kept pushing and pushing me. Of course I fought back. I’ve since come to recognize that impression to be the Spirit “which inviteth to do good…, and to persuade to believe in Jesus Christ…wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God” (Moroni 7:16).

That was the first time I felt something different. Simple I know, but it was the grand beginning of a witness. I will never forget the feeling of something beyond me encouraging me to ignore the attitudes of worldliness and seek for the world of a better. I knew at the very least that God was out there. Over the years I started to see God’s hand in my life. The principles of the gospel began to make more sense and I became addicted to learning and absorbing the doctrines taught over the pulpit and in the scriptures. My life seemed perfect. I found that I was much happier. Life’s burdens seemed lighter as I was trying to live like Jesus Christ.

Personal Response by Jack Rushton

I believe this is a very profound question that has undoubtedly been asked by millions of people from the beginning of time. Life can seem unfair at times as we experience our own personal suffering, and witness through our own eyes or through the media, the incredible suffering that seems to be such an integral part of the daily lives of people all over the world.

I had to come to grips with this question on a personal level when 19 years ago I broke my neck, severed my spinal cord, and became paralyzed from the neck down and ventilator dependent.

Personal Response by Richard Neitzel Holzapfel

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is often identified as the Mormon or LDS Church. LDS, in this case, is an acronym for Latter-day Saints, a part of the official name of the LDS Church. When religious bodies use similar names to identify themselves, such as FLDS and LDS, there may be and often is some confusion about the relationship between them.

Just as there are many Christian denominations which believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the long anticipated Jewish Messiah and the Savior of the world, yet disagree upon other significant doctrinal points, including the nature and composition of the Bible, there are individuals and groups who accept the message of the Restoration (the calling of Joseph Smith as a prophet and coming forth of additional scripture, including the Book of Mormon) yet disagree on some rather key doctrines, policies, and practices.

Personal Response by Richard Neitzel Holzapfel

Although The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) was organized in the United States in 1830, there have been various periods of its history, including some decades in the second half of the nineteenth century, when more Latter-day Saints (Mormons) lived outside the United States than within the United States. Today, with its headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, the message of the Restoration radiates to the four corners of the earth through an increased presence in the world with more than 200 Mormon missions outside the United States, the translated Book of Mormon in over 107 languages, a worldwide educational system, and nearly 80 temples built beyond the confines of the United States. The Mormon Church’s international humanitarian efforts increase each year providing help to people around the world no matter what their religious identity may be. This story is not any different from the history of the first-century Church which began in Judea but eventually spread across the known Mediterranean world by the end of the first century mostly through Jewish-Christian missionaries, most of them born in the Holy Land.

Today general officers of the Mormon Church come from around the world, including President Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the First Presidency (born in Ostrava, Morava, Czechoslovakia). Additionally, other General Authorities have been born in Brazil, Uruguay, Guatemala, Scotland, Mexico, Belgium, South Africa, England, Japan, Germany, Philippines, Argentina, South Korea, Canada, and El Salvador.

Seven million members, more than half the membership of the Mormon Church, are found in almost every country in the world from Albania to Norway; Belize to Panama; Colombia to Chile; Russia to Mongolia; Zimbabwe to Ghana; Australia to Singapore; the islands of the Caribbean, such as Haiti, Dominican Republic, and St. Kitts; and the islands of the South Pacific, such as Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, and New Zealand. Additionally, each year many international students, businessmen and women, diplomats and others join the Mormon Church in the United States increasing the international membership.

Each day in almost any way one can measure it, the Mormon Church is increasingly, more than ever before, an international Church proclaiming the Gospel to all who will listen; for God is no respecter of persons.