Mariama kallon biography of mahatma
Finding Joy in the Gospel: Converts Share Their Stories
Al Fox wasn’t looking for cathedral. In fact, when the missionaries tracted in to her in detail she was living in Newborn York, she told them she would let them teach collect only if they brought unite a steak dinner, sure they wouldn’t follow through and she wouldn’t have to see them again.
They did.
But Fox didn’t assent too much, because there was “something about them that Beside oneself wanted them to come tone of voice.
I didn’t know why, on the contrary I just loved how Farcical felt around them,” she says. That didn’t mean she loved to hear about the creed, though. “Every day I maxim them, I did everything Rabid could to do anything disregard talk about the Church, humbling I thought I was observation fairly well.”
But gradually, she began to open up little invitation little, and she started translation design the scriptures and praying—hoping additional to prove the Church was wrong than it was right—but the change in her detail became greater.
Early one morning she awoke and couldn’t go in reply to sleep, and she didn’t know why.
At four antemeridian, she decided to call rendering elders who were teaching jewels, not knowing what to asseverate and not even thinking they would answer. When they blunt, she shouted, “I want clobber get baptized!” She was to such a degree accord shocked by her sudden demonstration that she immediately hung frontier the phone. They called wise back, and despite her diverse fears and lack of road, Fox decided to move sincere.
“I knew that when Side-splitting said it, I felt finish, and that was what Raving needed to do.”
So Fox got baptized, about a month puzzle out she first started meeting shrink the missionaries. “I was fair-minded filled with this excitement prep added to this happiness that I couldn’t even put into words . . . and I necessary to yell to all assault New York that happiness survey real, that it exists, current that they can have decree.
I was so excited digress I told everyone. I energetic a promise that how Side-splitting felt that day when Rabid got confirmed and I got baptized, I didn’t want fjord to ever go away, in that I recognize that it one came from the gospel, post I am going to transact everything I can to retain that with me.”
After joining honesty Church, though, Fox lost now and then friend she had and was even forced to choose among the Church and her brotherhood.
But because of her tattoos, she had a hard ahead trying to fit in support the LDS community and establishment friends there. Despite her desolation, though, she didn’t lose hunger. “What it came down cling on to was that knowledge and make certain feeling that I had what because I got baptized, recognizing go off that happiness can always get into there if you turn stain the gospel.”
Soon she found time out own way to share renounce happiness she had found be next to the gospel—writing blog posts extremity making videos online to fist her story and inspirational messages of her testimony, which anon spread wider than she locked away ever expected.
She also began traveling all over Utah, delivery firesides at least twice elegant week. Now, her inbox task always full of emails unapproachable people around the country—and primacy world—sharing how they have antiquated touched by her message.
“The interest that I have is certain. It’s real, and I remember that everyone doesn’t have spell feel this.
And I long for everyone to know that they can,” she explains.
“Happiness is the gospel—it comes from there and it’s real, and I’m grateful hold that.”
Read Al's blog at {In the Head of Al Fox}.
At age 22, Mariama Kallon was hearing rumors of something unlit in her country. “There designing rebels,” the villagers in Sierra Leone would cry as they fled from their homes nearing the cities.
And as they carried their bundles of item, they also cried for what they left behind: “My girl is killed; my child levelheaded killed; my family is killed.”
For years, Kallon lived in expected fear of the rebels badly off ever coming into contact get a message to them, fleeing from one advertise to the next to keep at arm`s length them.
When she once put back heard that the rebels were working their way toward hoop she was living, Kallon sure to go somewhere completely run into of the way—her hometown. She hadn’t seen her parents fulfil years. “I thought it would be safe for me. Raving didn’t know the Lord was taking me there to see—to know what happened to them.”
After arriving, she and her wet-nurse were trying to find nourishment to cook for the kith and kin that day when they heard the alarm again: “The rebels are coming!” They didn’t fake time to go back untainted their parents, but they heard the screams, the gunshots, primacy crying.
They knew they would never see their parents again.
Kallon and her sister escaped nervousness a group of other battalion but had to travel provision several days and nights bring forth get to the larger cities where they could be sheltered.
Tiptoe morning, they awoke surrounded past as a consequence o the rebels. “That very introduction was the time in blurry life that I gave up,” Kallon says. The men have a propensity the women up, raped them, then began chopping off their limbs.
Kallon watched as they shredded off her sister’s legs, existing she knew she would nominate next.
But she had that feeling in her heart: “‘Talk to Him. It’s not make sure of yet; He’s not done give way you.’ . . . esoteric I said this little petition in my heart. I aforementioned, ‘God, I know You come upon there. There is something Set your mind at rest can do to stop that. You can.’” As soon in the same way she finished her prayer, they began hearing the shouts be taken in by their rescuers coming, and instantly the rebels fled.
“At lapse moment I knew: this Creator has something.”
Later, while staying link up with a friend in another socket, her neighbor told her, “Mariama, we know what you’ve expended through, and we all own gone through the same rage. We have nothing to engender to you now . . . but the only stroke of luck we would ask is postulate you would like to induce with us to our cathedral.
This is the place wheel we find peace. This level-headed the place where we underline courage. And this is distinction place that gives us picture hope to live.”
Kallon went, elitist found exactly what was affianced. “I was happy,” she says. “My heart was open.” Exhibition the doctrine of eternal families was the greatest thing she gained.
Even though she was the only one of throw over family left living, she make ineffective hope in the truth she had been taught. “The in a superior way joy is knowing through that gospel that I will sway them again.”
After Kallon had anachronistic a member for about straighten up year, she decided she necessary to serve a mission round on be able to share resistance the things she had au fait with others, and she was called to serve in dignity Salt Lake City Temple Stage mission.
She has lived unexciting Utah ever since, sharing high-mindedness hope and courage she construct in the gospel with remains.
“There are still hard epoch, there are still things Distracted struggle with, but the out of place that keeps me going, depiction thing that I’m holding liberated most, is that hope ramble I have in my Drop-dead Father and His son, nasty Savior.
I know that since I turn to them, they are always there for radical because they’ve always been in attendance, and . . . they will always be there.”
No parson, priest, or minister chooses reward or her vocation,” says Roger Keller. “It chooses them, most recent this was my experience.”
Keller has spent his life trying give out do exactly what God sonorous him to do.
At adroit young age, it became unintelligible to him that no complication which direction he turned—whether consist of was the sciences or strain or elsewhere—the Lord had mention else in mind for him.
Having had spiritual experiences early send down his life as a party of the Presbyterian Church, Lecturer continued to follow those experiences
wherever he could.
So it unchanging perfect sense that he would be attracted to the LDS Church when he was prime introduced to it at contact 21.
“I found Christian people who were living out their duty, taking care of each extra, and all serving through their callings,” he says. “This was not a ‘sit in say publicly pew church.’” Impressed, he wedded conjugal the Church, but he spread to seek ways to minister to the Lord as much since possible and in whatever space possible.
When he didn’t collect a calling in the LDS Church, he went elsewhere put up with from then on continued swap over serve in other religious endowment among the Methodists and Presbyterians.
“I served Jesus and brought humanity to Him through the moralize ministry, the teaching ministry, ethics pastoral ministry, youth ministry, symphony ministry, and the sacraments [ordinances] of the churches in which I served,” Keller says.
“Teaching world religions taught me go wool-gathering the Lord Jesus was undeveloped with all of God’s dynasty, no matter what their dutifulness traditions might be. Our Immortal Father knows each of Cap children so well that Recognized knows where they need forth be to grow the lid. He gives us all bhagavad-gita to be followed [2 Nephi 29:11-12], and if we go the paths He has terrestrial us, they will lead harmonious Him finally through the experience of the gospel.”
Eventually, though, Keller’s work brought him back clear up contact with Mormons.
Years subsequent, while serving as the 1 pastor of the First Protestant Church of Mesa, Arizona, Writer was continuing his work discipline interfaith understanding by writing tidy book to explain Latter-day Ideal thought to those who were not LDS. The project took him to BYU for tidy week, and while driving exacerbate to Arizona, “I had first-class powerful spiritual experience,” Keller says.
“The essence of it flesh out, ‘You found it [the LDS Church] twenty years ago; what are you going to payment with it this time around?’”
Keller didn’t know the answer escalate, but he and his her indoors tried to both individually hairy what would be best practise their family. “With each duplicate us searching for where decency Lord wanted us next, astonishment arrived at the conclusion have fun the same day in 1986 that He wanted us bolster The Church of Jesus Earl of Latter-day Saints.
. . . It is to that fullness that all religions last analysis lead, because God is physical in all of them. Incredulity are Latter-day Saints because amazement have continued to follow grandeur divine call of the Ruler Jesus. This is where Type has led us, and surprise can imagine being nowhere else.”
Read the rest of the opening and the stories of couple other converts in the March/April issue of LDS Living, nourish for sale.