I'm new, testing this stuff out!

[Mirith]

Hello everyone, I just found this through reddit and thought I'd stop by and say something.

Church wise, I'm a convert currently attending a YSA ward/institute near my college. My family doesn't actually know I got baptized, which is a story for another day! Sometimes I struggle with my faith and I'm very much a cafeteria Mormon. But I have a strong testimony of the basic spiritual truths and I don't think that will change for a while...

And just general information about me... I'm a linguistics major and I have no idea what I want to do with my life after I graduate college. I like dogs and I'm allergic to cats. I like to knit things but school sort of consumes my life so I don't often have time to really make stuff. I'm dating an exmormon who is quite an amazing person and I'm very happy to call him mine.

But I'll probably be posting in the mixed-faith relationships section soon. Boys are complicated and the conflict of religion doesn't quite help.

Anyway, that's me.

[Red Ryder]

Welcome!

You'll find we are a great bunch of personalities with various shades of faith and a whole lot of life experience.

What did you find compelling with the church to get baptized?

I'm also allergic to cats. Oh, and church too!

[Corsair]

We're glad you found us. Yes, mixed faith relationships are complicated. I suspect that leaving the church would be largely easy and routine if not for the faithful spouses and parents, and siblings around us.

[MalcolmVillager]

Welcome. You are not the average NOM which will make you a hot commodity when it comes to perspective. Please share early and often!

[Mirith]

What did you find compelling with the church to get baptized?

(hope I'm doing the quote thing right...)

I think I've always believed in God and Christ. Not sure why though.

I've been attending church for the last four years but only took the lessons this past summer and got baptized a few months ago. Long story short, I was looking at different religions because I wanted to join one and my Mormon friend invited me to her church and I liked it more than the other churches I had been to so far.

I stuck around because I was continuously impressed by the scriptural knowledge, reverence, and genuinely charitable attitudes of ward members, which I hadn't exactly seen in a church yet. (My boyfriend says that I've been very lucky with wards so far; that family ward and my current YSA ward). People were very friendly, which can be attributed to love-bombing Mormons are so famous for but at the same time it always felt genuine to me.

And some random points of doctrine made sense to me -- I had always wondered what happened to people who lived without an opportunity to join a church -- would they go straight to Hell? That didn't seem like what a loving God would do... The idea of a living prophet also made sense. Biblical peoples had prophets so why not modern-day people?

This was my initial impression of the church, and it has shifted over the years.

[Ghost]

Welcome to the forums.

It's easy to by cynical about motives at times, but I agree that you can find a lot of genuinely caring and accepting people in the LDS church. Obviously that's not exclusive to Mormonism and your experience may vary from congregation to congregation, but the strong community is one major thing that keeps me participating, myself.