In a new video from the Church, Elder Carlos A. Godoy, General Authority Seventy, shares his experience joining the Church as a teenager. But what really makes Elder Godoy’s story come to life are the clever and nostalgic retro animations reminiscent of the aesthetic and pop culture of the 1970s.
He first became interested in the Church when he saw young people his age who were Church members playing a simple game—but they were so happy. He wanted to find out more about what made them happy and met with the missionaries just two days later.
After he was baptized a member of the Church, teenage Elder Godoy didn’t have many friends in his ward and felt lonely most Sundays. But all that changed after he was invited to attend a local youth conference with young men and young women from around the area.
While at the conference, he watched as groups of noisy and fun-loving teenagers immediately grew quiet at the announcement of the opening prayer. Elder Godoy shares, “[I thought,] ‘Wow! They are different. I want to be like them.’ For me, it was the Lord again sending a message, ‘Carlos, don’t give up. This is your place.”
When his family moved across town and Carlos once again found himself struggling to fit in at church, an adult leader invited him to seminary.
“Every morning I was receiving the good word of God,” he shares. “And that gave me the understanding [of] who I was, the strength to keep fighting, and keep my conversion process ... going.”
A photo shown in the video also showcases Elder Godoy’s real-life, very retro hairstyle from his younger years as a teenager in Brazil. In the photo you can see young Carlos in the top right corner. The girl in yellow at the bottom of the image—Monica Brandao—was one of his first and only friends from that first youth conference. As luck would have it and many years later, she became Monica Godoy after they were sealed in the São Paulo Brazil Temple in 1984.
You can hear more about Elder Godoy’s conversion story and his teenage years in Brazil in the video player above.
