Posted by:
Jesse
(
)
Date: April 11, 2014 09:23PM
I've been a lurker and occasional poster on this board for about 2 years. I was BIC, graduated from BYU, served a mission to Sweden, nearly married a Mormon girl I met there. The first doubts I had started when I was a missionary. I started talking to a fellow on the street in Lund, Sweden one afternoon...I started giving the first vision spiel...at the end he asked me if I knew that there were multiple versions of Joseph Smith's first vision and that they didn't all exactly match up. I had never heard that before. I told him he was mistaken and that whoever had given him that information was a liar. He laughed and walked off. It got me thinking, but I put it up on the shelf. Things kept building from there.
It's been a ten year process since that first hit to my Mormon testimony till today. I stopped believing shortly after the mission as I started doing research into church history etc, but faked it for a few years because it was what I knew. It was my social life, my family life. Went inactive when I went back to Europe for grad school. Finally decided that I needed to cut the last tie to the LDS church, my membership.
I sent my resignation email on April 3rd and today I received the letter from the LDS church acknowledging it. Now, of course they said it was an "ecclesiastical matter that must be handled by local priesthood leaders", but that's just a formality. I'm finally out and I'm thrilled about it. Planning to call the bishop the church listed just to tell him to hurry up and process my request so that I can receive the final letter.
This hasn't gone over well with my family. It has ruined what was once a close relationship with my father. But I had to be true to myself. I could no longer associate myself with the LDS church.
Just wanted to share my good news with the board. I'm happy to finally be out of the LDS church!