I am 33 years old, I've been a member of the LDS Church since I was around 10 years old. To be honest I was forcefully converted by my mother who was a member of the Church after many painful beatings. My father who was not LDS nor is he Christian, tried really hard to stop me from joining but my mother's forceful hand gave way to his reasoning. I never wanted to join the church but I did do the mission thing, and I married my sweetheart in the temple, I also graduated from BYU. But after many years of fighting the urge to leave and trying to find a way to compromise what I kept seeing as a growing powerhouse that didn't really cater to the poor but only to its growing influence that I decided it was time to leave.

It broke my wife's heart, but we promised each other that we still really loved one another and that I will not seek to stop her from moving forward with her belief in the LDS religion. We also agreed that even though I've resigned my membership in the Church that she will continue to raise our children LDS and have them chose for themselves when the time came.

I appreciate the church's teachings on the word of wisdom, I definitely am not going to drink or smoke, but I do not think I can compromise the loving and caring God in the New Testament to the God of harshness and gloom in the Doctrine and Covenants. It’s almost unbelievable to me that the God of the D&C was similar to the God of the Old Testament, where everything was about destruction and death etc.

I think the book of Abraham was another moment where I just completely knew that something wasn’t right. I studied the book for many years and I read about what many people said about the writings, both from LDS figures and non LDS figures and I came to the conclusion that it’s false and not real. I still have a deep regard and I know that Jesus is the Christ which is another reason why I can’t join my father’s faith since they don’t think he was the Mashiach or Messiah in English, and they are still waiting.

My mother passed away a month ago and it was then that I decided I was going to announce that I was done with the Church. Now my journey into the unknown has just begun. I’ve been reading a lot about my father’s faith, but like I said I believe in Jesus being the Mashiach which he doesn’t so I can’t go back to the religion of my forefathers. But I will continue to worship God the best way that I can, only not through the prism of the LDS religion.