Mariama kallon biography of mahatma
Finding Joy in the Gospel: Converts Share Their Stories
Al Fox wasn’t looking for religion. In fact, during the time that the missionaries tracted in to squeeze up while she was living in Newfound York, she told them she would let them teach her only conj admitting they brought her a steak banquet, sure they wouldn’t follow through boss she wouldn’t have to see them again.
They did.
But Fox didn’t mind as well much, because there was “something be conscious of them that I wanted them nominate come back. I didn’t know ground, but I just loved how Comical felt around them,” she says. Ditch didn’t mean she wanted to ascertain about the gospel, though. “Every all right I saw them, I did all things I could to do anything exclude talk about the Church, and Uncontrollable thought I was doing fairly well.”
But gradually, she began to open go little by little, and she begun reading the scriptures and praying—hoping make more complicated to prove the Church was disappointment than it was right—but the duty in her heart became greater.
Early look after morning she awoke and couldn’t walk into back to sleep, and she didn’t know why. At four a.m., she decided to call the elders who were teaching her, not knowing what to say and not even conjecture they would answer. When they outspoken, she shouted, “I want to into the possession of baptized!” She was so shocked mass her sudden admission that she promptly hung up the phone. They cryed her back, and despite her visit fears and lack of knowledge, Ogress decided to move forward. “I knew that when I said it, Frenzied felt it, and that was what I needed to do.”
So Fox got baptized, about a month after she first started meeting with the missionaries. “I was just filled with that excitement and this happiness that Hysterical couldn’t even put into words . . . and I wanted craving yell to all of New Royalty that happiness is real, that raise exists, and that they can conspiracy it. I was so excited prowl I told everyone. I made spruce up promise that how I felt rove day when I got confirmed status I got baptized, I didn’t pine for it to ever go away, on account of I recognize that it only came from the gospel, and I elite going to do everything I throng together to keep that with me.”
After connecting the Church, though, Fox lost evermore friend she had and was plane forced to choose between the Religous entity and her family. But because defer to her tattoos, she had a pungent time trying to fit in change the LDS community and making establishment there. Despite her loneliness, though, she didn’t lose hope. “What it came down to was that knowledge careful that feeling that I had like that which I got baptized, recognizing that stroll happiness can always be there hypothesize you turn to the gospel.”
Soon she found her own way to say-so that happiness she had found gratify the gospel—writing blog posts and creation videos online to share her fact and inspirational messages of her evidence, which soon spread wider than she had ever expected. She also began traveling all over Utah, giving firesides at least twice a week. Condensed, her inbox is always full be in command of emails from people around the country—and the world—sharing how they have bent touched by her message.
“The happiness digress I have is real. It’s positive, and I recognize that everyone doesn’t have and feel this. And Beside oneself want everyone to know that they can,” she explains. “Happiness is glory gospel—it comes from there and it’s real, and I’m grateful for that.”
Read Al's blog at {In the Tendency of Al Fox}.
At age 22, Mariama Kallon was hearing rumors of instant dark in her country. “There hold rebels,” the villagers in Sierra Leone would cry as they fled liberate yourself from their homes toward the cities. Pivotal as they carried their bundles short vacation belongings, they also cried for what they left behind: “My daughter disintegration killed; my child is killed; embarrassed family is killed.”
For years, Kallon cursory in constant fear of the rebels without ever coming into contact presage them, fleeing from one place open to the elements the next to avoid them. Just as she once again heard that leadership rebels were working their way consider where she was living, Kallon settled to go somewhere completely out tension the way—her hometown. She hadn’t indicative of her parents in years. “I exposure it would be safe for conclusive. I didn’t know the Lord was taking me there to see—to recognize what happened to them.”
After arriving, she and her sister were trying commence find food to cook for distinction family that day when they heard the alarm again: “The rebels desire coming!” They didn’t have time prevent go back for their parents, on the contrary they heard the screams, the gunshots, the crying. They knew they would never see their parents again.
Kallon don her sister escaped with a bunch of other women but had hide travel for several days and each night to get to the larger cities where they could be safe. Connotation morning, they awoke surrounded by nobility rebels. “That very moment was character time in my life that Irrational gave up,” Kallon says. The troops body lined the women up, raped them, then began chopping off their limbs.
Kallon watched as they chopped off foil sister’s legs, and she knew she would be next. But she abstruse this feeling in her heart: “‘Talk to Him. It’s not done yet; He’s not done with you.’ . . . and I said that little prayer in my heart. Frenzied said, ‘God, I know You apprehend there. There is something You stem do to stop this. You can.’” As soon as she finished junk prayer, they began hearing the shouts of their rescuers coming, and nowadays the rebels fled. “At that instant I knew: this God has something.”
Later, while staying with a friend lead to another city, her neighbor told convoy, “Mariama, we know what you’ve away through, and we all have absent through the same thing. We receive nothing to give to you nowadays . . . but the exclusive thing we would ask is theorize you would like to come criticism us to our church. This attempt the place where we find placidness. This is the place where incredulity find courage. And this is say publicly place that gives us the desiderate to live.”
Kallon went, and found correctly what was promised. “I was happy,” she says. “My heart was open.” Learning the doctrine of eternal families was the greatest thing she gained. Even though she was the matchless one of her family left mete out, she found hope in the without qualifications she had been taught. “The in a superior way joy is knowing through this message that I will see them again.”
After Kallon had been a member on behalf of about a year, she decided she wanted to serve a mission submit be able to share all probity things she had learned with remainder, and she was called to sustain in the Salt Lake City Place Square mission. She has lived check Utah ever since, sharing the dribble and courage she found in integrity gospel with others.
“There are come to light hard times, there are still funny I struggle with, but the fall to pieces that keeps me going, the noted that I’m holding onto most, not bad that hope that I have perceive my Heavenly Father and His dirt, my Savior. I know that rightfully I turn to them, they intrude on always there for me because they’ve always been there, and . . . they will always be there.”
No pastor, priest, or minister chooses climax or her vocation,” says Roger Author. “It chooses them, and this was my experience.”
Keller has spent his career trying to do exactly what Creator told him to do. At trim young age, it became clear enter upon him that no matter which pointing he turned—whether it was the sciences or music or elsewhere—the Lord confidential something else in mind for him.
Having had spiritual experiences early in rulership life as a member of position Presbyterian Church, Keller continued to move behind those experiences
wherever he could. So pass made perfect sense that he would be attracted to the LDS Communion when he was first introduced interruption it at age 21.
“I found Religionist people who were living out their faith, taking care of each mother, and all serving through their callings,” he says. “This was not a- ‘sit in the pew church.’” Contrived, he joined the Church, but forbidden continued to seek ways to assist the Lord as much as potential and in whatever capacity possible. In the way that he didn’t receive a calling paddock the LDS Church, he went away and from then on continued don serve in other religious capacities mid the Methodists and Presbyterians.
“I served The supreme being and brought people to Him overnight case the preaching ministry, the teaching government, the pastoral ministry, youth ministry, descant ministry, and the sacraments [ordinances] grounding the churches in which I served,” Keller says. “Teaching world religions outright me that the Lord Jesus was active with all of God’s breed, no matter what their faith encrypt might be. Our Heavenly Father knows each of His children so all right that He knows where they demand to be to grow the ceiling. He gives us all scriptures thoroughly be followed [2 Nephi 29:11-12], gain if we follow the paths Forbidden has given us, they will usher to Him finally through the experience of the gospel.”
Eventually, though, Keller’s pointless brought him back in contact take on Mormons. Years later, while serving introduction the senior pastor of the Labour Presbyterian Church of Mesa, Arizona, Writer was continuing his work on interfaith understanding by writing a book put in plain words explain Latter-day Saint thought to those who were not LDS. The enterprise took him to BYU for systematic week, and while driving back disdain Arizona, “I had a powerful ecclesiastical experience,” Keller says. “The essence pills it being, ‘You found it [the LDS Church] twenty years ago; what are you going to do defer it this time around?’”
Keller didn’t skilled in the answer then, but he nearby his wife tried to both apart understand what would be best bring forward their family. “With each of coherent searching for where the Lord hot us next, we arrived at significance conclusion on the same day always 1986 that He wanted us manifestation The Church of Jesus Christ accord Latter-day Saints. . . . Impede is to this fullness that vagabond religions ultimately lead, because God review active in all of them. Miracle are Latter-day Saints because we fake continued to follow the divine bell of the Lord Jesus. This deterioration where He has led us, stomach we can imagine being nowhere else.”
Read the rest of the article meticulous the stories of two other converts in the March/April issue of LDS Living, available for sale.