What an amazing story!
“Don’t let the Mormons convert you,” a friend told me before I left the Philippines for Utah in 1987.
I shrugged off the advice. I was 15, born and raised Catholic. Our family was devout, usually sitting in the front row of the chapel every Sunday mass. As a teen, I liked to stop by an empty Catholic church after school just to commune quietly with God. Besides, I didn’t even know what or who the Mormons were. Maybe Mormons were like the Jehovah’s Witnesses who sometimes came to our door, giving me a magazine which I politely accepted but didn’t even look at.
That July in 1987, my mom was being sent by her employer to Utah State University (USU) in Logan, Utah, for a training. Being the only child home, I tagged along to America, staying at my uncle’s in L.A. for a few weeks before I joined Mom.