We mostly all know how we lost our testimonies but how did you get your testimony in the first place?

When I was about 7 someone dared me to bear my testimony in Sacrament Meeting. I did. I knew what to say---all the key phrases. I continued from there never stopping to consider whether I really had one or not.

Before my mission I started to reconsider my testimony and fasted and prayed long and hard to gain a true one, a stronger one--- which of course is subconscious code for any one at all. Looking back now, what happened was I finally worked up a few chills and took that as a sign from the spirit at the time and went on my way.

Ironically late on in my mission when I bore my testimony to a man who answered a door I knocked on he responded, "I don't doubt you sincerely believe that but how do you know it is not just something you worked yourself up into?" He said it in a friendly fatherly manner and deep down I knew he was right though I didn't consciously admit it to myself. My subconscious had a field day with it though.

When I was young my mother told me how she got her testimony. She first gained a testimony of temple marriage for time and all eternity and *knew* it was true. "Knowing" the rest was true like Joseph Smith etc came later. When she was 18 and my Dad, the handsomest, kindest man in the county, asked her to marry him was when this started coincidentally. She never said she prayed or that the HG witnessed to her or anything like that. It was just temple marriage that gave her the burning in the bosom and the rest of the pieces started falling in place later. Hmmmnnnn . . .

My older brother got his testimony when he got ordained a Deacon and was told he now had more power than even the President of the United States. My mother told me he started talking down to her at that point. She forgot about that years later but I remember. My brother was in it to win it from the get go.

So many reasons. I think the most common one may be to go along to get along. Irrationality is the key to being a part of the group you want to be in, after all.

I was basically a parrot that started repeating what I heard.

Somehow it never occurred to me not to trust the people around me. I thought grownups were smart and good back then.

Yep, me too

I don't think I ever really had a testimony of TSCC.

The only reason I got baptized was because my friends were doing it, so I wanted to do the popular thing too.

My husband just now said that he was crying when he was getting baptized, but it wasn't because he was feeling the spirit; he was thinking he had doubts, especially about Joseph Smith, and was afraid of what he was getting himself into.

My testimony was solid by the time the missionaries (2nd set of them), got to the door. I was young an impressionable. I was their first convert.

So many things were happening. Fighting with my gf over doctrinal points, and we really had square offs. It was satisfying, when I got her on the point. She was a Biblical scriptorian.

Then I went ahead and taught the missionaries, and they were amazed. I was their 'golden contact', a myth. They were so whooped by my knowledge, that they both wrote a 1 1/2 page testimony to me in my triple combo.

It was interesting when I got out, because I only had been there for 10 years, but I got so much 'done', that I felt I should have been called to a GA position.

I was never called to anything more than a Scoutmaster. I didn't even know what to do with that. Anyways, I did my research and left.

My parents beat it in to me.

In a dream of all things.
this happened when i was investigating the church.
I had this dream that Christ came to me and offered me faith as something i needed.

I never had a testimony in the church itself.
When i joined in the early 2000 what attracted me was the hospitality of the people.
I didn't know this would change every time someone new would come in.
The invites to Family Home Evening, dinners, and other things outside church events became few and fewer.

I realized i was just another face in the church sometimes sitting alone other times the place holder between families i didn't know.

It was a bit of shocker really.

I was born with it....or maybe born into it is more accurate. I never asked for it, or got a burning bosom, about anything that would indicate the church is what it claims.

I remember very distinctly as a child one Sunday morning walking up the lane to Sunday School just me and my mother and she told me "we belonged to the only true church and the others weren't but they think they are. They don't know." I remember thinking how lucky we were. Felt so special.

I remember thinking how great it was that I was born in the church, in this day and age of the "elite" generation, in America(!), and white. How special is that!?
That checked all the "better than thou" boxes, except being male which was a notch above me.

I figured I must have been super smart and valiant in the preexistence to have been chosen among the chosen!

LOL. How embarrassing. I guess people want to hear they are special, and God loves them best. Most religions sell that crap but Mormons are especially adept at it.

I joined the cult between my junior and senior year in college. I was 20. At Michigan Tech the dean of the school, the head of the history department and the head of the chemistry department were all Mormons. In fact, they were the only Mormons at the University and all had top positions. That was rather heady to me and proof Mormonism was true. I was invited to their homes for dinners and they would stop and talk to me if they saw me on campus. It made me feel special. As an introvert I never felt like that way prior to joining. I believed them and believed in them that they knew the truth of Mormonism. My testimony was based on those men.

I have since learned to trust less and to verity more. I was vulnerable. Cults are great at finding folks like myself.

Had no idea you were a convert and your story makes a lot of sense to me. I was raised in an old pioneer farming town in the mountains and people there who were all Mormons were genuinely lovely people. Still are. Everyone did things for each other without even asking. We were happy and it was great. But it was also easy to give the Mormon church the credit for that and believe it was only so because we had the true gospel.

I can't say as I ever had one.

CL2, (who can't log in and post) sent me her response to this thread which actually made me laugh.

"I don't know," she began. Like it just snuck up on her, HAHA. Sound familiar?

So I asked her if I could share.

"Feel free to share anything you want. I'm still in shock that I ever had one!"

"But it took me a long time to let go of my testimony, but as I look back, I'm like why did it take so long?????? After what they did??? "


Considering what she's been through that all tickled me.




.

I will.

CL2 is a treasure. Like what they call a steel magnolia although perhaps steel sego lily is more apt. Probably doesn't feel like that to her but I see it.

Nobody "has" a testimony. Some people are convinced that God likes them best. Then they go around and make the rest of us feel like sh!t.

I have a clear memory of sitting in primary and thinking “I’m so lucky to have been born into the true church.” I just always took it for granted that it was true. I never had powerful spiritual experience. I often tested “Moroni’s promise” by reading the BoM and praying to “know” that it was true. I never got any response from my prayers, I just continued to “know” that it was true. I was in my 50s before I ever really considered the possibility that the church was anything other than what it claimed to be.

"I never got any response from my prayers, I just continued to “know” that it was true."


Ditto. Perfect way to put it.