I was an obedient missionary. I was happy doing it too. I enjoyed knocking on doors. I didn't really enjoy contacting people on the street because it seemed more pushy - at the door all they have to do is shut it to make you shut up. It was rare that a door was open longer than for a person to say, "ikke interesseret". So I learned to talk to strangers at doors, and to get them talking for long times. I felt successful because of that. I had many people who committed to baptisms, although none of them ended up getting baptized. I felt "the spirit" in many different ways at many different times. In fact, my first week there I looked at a map, and whenever I looked at a street on it, I always felt this tingle on my chest. So we biked down there, knocked on a door - no one was home. Knocked on a second door, and a guy opened up, told us he believed everything about Mormonism due to a near death experience, and wanted to get baptized. After a few days he called us up and told us he never wanted to speak with us again, because his wife said she'd leave him if he was baptized. With experiences like that, you'd think I'd still be a TBM.

I had many experiences like that. And yet, despite how grand the experience, despite how amazing the investigator, despite whatever I considered miracles occurred, no one ever got baptized from my efforts on my mission. It confused the hell out of me - why would a loving God, who could create these miracles, not just push these people a little bit further? God was all-powerful, so he could convert everyone if he wanted to. And that's when it hit me - the reason that they weren't being converted is because it was unnecessary. That is, if there was a God and the only way to save people was to convert them, then God wasn't a loving God because he was helping convert them. I worked my ass off. I prayed my ass off. I believed it all. I was as obedient as I possibly could be. And yet, none of it, despite how favorable the conditions were with investigators, resulted in baptisms. I concluded that God could convert world but he doesn't, because it isn't the most important thing.

There was a second thing that occurred on my mission. I was an obedient hard-working missionary. But then things didn't fit together. The mission president said we couldn't knock on doors more than an hour a day, and yet I was in Denmark, a small branch, and had nothing better to do. There was no way I could be obedient to that. I felt a strong thought come to my mind and tell me what area I should go to (and had an amazing experience there), and yet the mission president told me never to go to that area because of its distance. The mission president and area authorities disagreed on other minute rules - which were the world to me as I tried to be obedient. It resulted in my world imploding. The spirit that I felt, the mission president, and the area authority all disagreed with each other. At least one of them had to be wrong.

Being obedient and trying to be thoughtful, I read my scriptures many many times. And so each time I'd notice new errors in it. New things that didn't make sense. I never read the scriptures after my mission because I no longer wanted to think about all that was wrong with it.

It was being too obedient and faithful that caused me to become apostate. Unfortunately, it would still be years before I would take the final mental plunge to lead me out of the church.

What? You mean you didn't have people falling into comas and waking up having seen Jesus?

You didn't have angels coming down and rebuking those that opposed you?

I remember thinking I must not be faithful enough to have the missionary experiences like those in the BOM. I felt like a failure. Another wonderful side affect of the Mormon church.

It was on my mission as well. I met one atheist, in Alabama, who posed some questions to me, simple ones like "how do you explain dinosaurs and cave-men?" He really got me thinking. I looked to church resources for answers, and wasn't too successful. I started doubting god and Joseph Smith, it all just sounded so farfetched. It was shortly after that we were teaching a media referral a 1st discussion, half-way through he looked at me and said, "I don't believe that you believe a word of what your saying, now this guy (pointing to my companion) he really believes it." Still thinking that TSCC was true, I was just struggling, I talked to my MP, I don't remember what he said, but I do remember that he pulled out some nail clippers and started filing on one of his fingernails. That is when I was done,but I was still out there for another year, as junior companion. But still it took me a few years to be done with the church, I went home, got married in the temple (now divorced), had a few callings, and kept waiting till I could be inactive, now I'm done with the church, have been for about six years, but haven't submitted my formal resignation, that's my new years resolution.

I never really had any good arguments for any athiests. The one I came up with was that if God created our bodies, then we shouldn't find anything that's unnecessary (other than disease). I thought I had a pretty good argument, but it turns out I was wrong.

Take our eyes for example - the rods and cones are translucent and reversed from what you think they would be, so that light has to reflect off of the back of the eye before it hits them. This is why we have a blind spot - the neurons have to go through the eye, where if the rods and cones were turned around, you wouldn't need a blind spot. Any engineer would have the rods and cones turned around - cameras are better engineered than our eyes, since it typically receives the light directly. Our eyes would be more sensitive if rods and cones were reversed, how an engineer would make them. I'm sure I could come up with plenty of examples of how our bodies could have been engineered better.

Wow...what a story and this new yr. will be an exciting one for you for sure. Best wishes.

Yah know what Josh, I wish my Dad (now deceased) and you could have had a conversation.

He never went on a mission (he was a convert) but after about 20 yrs in the church, he had less callings due to failing health, and had to retire early, and thus had more time on his hands. He started to read and study the scriptures and church history heavily, and kept finding inconsistency and contradiction after another.

He mentioned these to me, but I was brainwashed from birth--so I resisted believing him, although I still listened intently (without saying anything).

It dawned on me, after I finally left home, had kids of my own and realized I didn't "like" church despite wanting to like it, that some of the things he had discovered might be worth investigating. So I started reading and it all unravelled very very quickly.

What a joke Mormonism is.... There isn't anything redeeming about it, and the history is full of a bunch of sicko perverts and authoritarian henchmen. Nothing I could ever be proud of, so I hightailed it out of there.

I like the South Park episode where the Mormons move to town. Stan (I think) was told the story of how Joseph Smith gave the papers to Martin Harris who lost them. Stan goes, "Wait! Mormons know this story, and they still believe its true?" Things just started to become more and more obvious. Take Joseph Smith's scripture in D&C that says basically if you can write scripture like Joseph then you don't need to believe Joseph. I can do that! The Salamandersociety does that all the time! And on and on.

I could never figure out if we were to teach Christ, why was all the talk about Joe Smith. That was one of the things that started me going out.

exactly.....why don't more people who are missionaries wonder this. Did many investigators ask this question?

Mormonism, and religion in general, is so illogical it makes one's mind reel. Mormons very often will try to make it all sound logical and then when you successfully show them it isn't at all logical they hit you with, "It's illogical so you will have faith." Say, what ???? So why were you wasting my time trying to make it all sound plausible?

All the eternal blessings bothered me because they were only for worthy Mormons. My "Never Mormon" father was the most honest and lovely person I ever knew and yet according to TSCC my mother was going to need a Mormon husband in the eternities to go to the highest level of heaven. Yet none of the Mormon men my mother knew could hold a candle to my dad. That made absolutely no sense to me. Guess it didn't make much sense to Mom either 'cause she stuck to my dad like glue. Thank goodness.

My friend is a TBM, her mormon.org account starts with "I am Mormon because it makes sense to me." I agree with you, it's quite illogical, but somehow she makes sense of it. I have been in several facebook battles with her on various topics, she lives in Utah, I don't, and that is her logic, "you just have to take it on faith, it's not for us to understand in this life." Ugh,

My great-grandmother divorced her husband because he became apostate. She remarried and states in her history that it was a huge mistake. The second man never compared. The first was always so sweet, and the second was a loaf.

I spent day after day going door to door in Japan. I remember observing how the Japanese really didn't have a crime problem like the USA, and they treated each other with respect. I often wondered how a country where most people really didn't believe in God could actually in many respects be more "moral" (at least in my eyes) than the people (Mormons) I had left behind in the USA. I often wondered what good it would do to make them all Mormon -- would they be any better off?

This kind of gnawed at me the whole time I was there. I didn't admit it out loud, but by the end of my two years I began to think that Mormonism was an inferior belief system to what we were trying to replace over there. It certainly didn't increase my faith to be a missionary.