Hello everyone! My name is Will, I'm 23, a college student, and a spiritual seeker. I live in a small town in eastern North Carolina, but hope to move to a larger city when I transfer to a four year university. I grew up in a very religious Protestant home. My dad grew up in a Pentecostal/Independent Baptist family, and my mother grew up in a strict Southern Baptist household. I grew up in the Southern Baptist church until I was about 12 or 13; we then went to a Missouri Lutheran Church-a very conservative branch within the Lutheran faith. My parents joined and I was baptized into that church. When I was around 16, we left the Missouri Lutheran Church and my mother became a member of a more liberal branch of Lutheranism-the ELCA, otherwise known as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Prior to this I was searching for the right faith for me. Before I was baptized I became a born again Christian, however, I never felt "saved". By the time I was 16, I was very interested in becoming Jewish. I love the rituals and the ancient, yet modern beliefs that Judaism teaches. Although I would love to be Jewish, it would be very hard to leave my Christian faith.
Then when I was around 18 I decided that I wanted to be Catholic. I had always loved the Catholic faith even as a teenager ever since I had seen Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story. I loved the rituals, sacraments, prayers, and culture of the Catholic church. I was confirmed into the Roman Catholic church when I was about 19 or 20. I attended Mass, said the occasional rosary or prayers, but I wasn't a very good Catholic. I was feeling empty; this feeling always seemed to creep upon me after a while. To better explain it, I lose my peace and comfort, I become jaded and mean to others. So I visited a more modern church where the music is on the screen and a rock band lead the music. Let's just say that was not for me; I got a headache after the second song. So I drifted between intense religious periods of prayer and months where I rarely acknowledged God, except for listening to spiritual music. After many months of searching, I began attending an Episcopal church. I like going and I seem to get something out of it, yet somehow I feel empty again after going for a while.
Enter the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While deciding whether I wanted to join the Catholic church, I began looking into the Mormon church. I listened to Gladys Knight's inspirational album, Many Different Roads, and began researching the Mormon faith. I always found inspiration in the testimony of Marie Osmond. I always felt her testimony was true. As I researched, I found some of the teachings very interesting and some made me scratch my head and wonder. However, I always felt that the Mormon faith had some truth to it. Earlier this year I decided to buy a set of scriptures from Desert Book. I have been reading the scriptures on and off since then, but I am allowing myself to seek out the truth from all areas. I read not only the Standard Works, but the Torah, the Bible, and books from spiritual teachers like Pema Chodron and Thich Nhat Hanh. So here I am, still searching for peace and comfort in a not so peaceful world. If you have any advice, insight, wisdom, or just want to say hello, send me an email.
