My road to God

Here's the little dead end street that I grew up in
(well, okay, technically, it's the one across from my dead end,
Google Maps didn't capture my house)

I've been meaning to write the story of how this semi-Buddhist atheist Chinese girl became a devoted Christian, but it's turning out to be harder than I imagined. I don't have one event that led me to God. I didn't see an angel telling me what to believe. There was no miraculous healing or missionaries tracking me down in the darkest hour. I wasn't even searching for the truth. I was just an ordinary girl, trying to live very normal life and hide in a crowd of Asian people so I don't ever stand out! (that never really worked out...)


So where to start? I suppose I should start with my parents. My father was atheist, as far as I knew. Or perhaps, it would be more accurate to say, he simply didn't have a belief. He was culturally
Buddhist - we went to the Buddhist temples during Chinese New Year and lit one of these incense and bowed to statues that we vaguely don't recognize and it brought us good luck. Beyond that, I don't really remember anything about my dad's belief. Although after we became Christian, my mom told us a story about how my dad brought back a cup of holy water once. Being his easily persuaded self, he met a priest of some sort one day and brought back a cup of holy water that will bless our family. He left it on the table the next day when he went to work and my mom dumped it out and put in normal tap water. Needless to say, nothing ever happened with that.


Mom was also Buddhist, although I think her sect would be considered a modern extremist of Buddhism. She joined the SGI (Sōka Gakkai International) when she was young and was a pretty active member throughout my childhood. We had a little shrine at home that she prayed to everyday. It was a meditation or some sort I think. She knelt there and read the same word over and over again for hours at a time. I had to do it too sometimes, although I don't think I ever lasted more than half an hour... *nam-myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo* *nam-myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo* *nam-myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo*... I think I will remember that phrase for life.

We also went to meetings often, listening to different guest speakers. We had kids classes, where we learned to be good people. We had annual performances and dances. We had dinner parties and friendly gatherings. It was a good community with lots of kind people and uplifting activities. I don't really remember anything their teachings, beliefs or doctrines but that might simply be my lack of memory over actually none-existence. As far as I knew at the time, the sect followed a great teacher in Japan, who taught people how to live in peace and harmony. I call them extremist because I don't ever remember them talking about Buddha in their meetings. But they say they're Buddhist, so Buddhist they are.

If we talk Christian. There was only one Christian-related thing in my childhood and that's my auntie, who lived in Australia. I have two memories about her Christianity. One was she gave me a lot of picture books (hand-me-downs from my cousin) and one of them told the story of the birth of Christ. I think there was also one about Noah's ark. I read them like any other story books but when the missionaries later told it to me, I was surprised that I still remembered it well. The other thing is when we went to visit them, she would prepare food for us on Sunday but she would never eat. She was always fasting! (at least, that's what it felt like to me as a kid).

Here's a nice depiction of my life in China,
Thanks again to Google Maps. 

My conversion story inevitably intertwines with my life story because I feel that God planned my life exactly the way it is so I would learn to believe. So the story really begins when we moved to China. I was ten years old. The move to China had made some significant impacts in our family. Leaving the culturally Buddhist environment and moving into an atheist country meant that we no longer went bowing at Buddhist temples during Chinese New Year. We left behind a lot of customs, cultures and beliefs. It also meant my mother could no longer attend her SGI meetings, not having a community in China. And so, we became wandering souls in a sense, I suppose.

My sister and I attended American International School there. As far as religious highlight goes, we met Christians. We began to interact with Christians and be friends with them. We started celebrating Christmas and Easter and gained a lot of weight from that. We had world religion

This is what I would've worn

classes, where we learned about Hinduism, Judaism, Islamic, Taoism and so forth. Truly though, I became an artificial Christian because I decided at that point in life, I really wanted to wear a cross. It just looks so cool. I never got around to getting one though :( My sister was 17 at the time, she got a little bit more out of it than I did. Our last year of school there, a LDS family moved from the States. We became good friends with them and their unique lifestyle eventually sparked an interest in my sister. She wanted to know why they won't hang out on Sunday, they they won't drink tea, why they won't buy fake DVDs... just why in the world are they so law-abiding!

Well, rest of that is my sister's story. Enough to say that she became interested enough to want to attend church. Although that never happened and we moved again. This time to Australia. The whole process was kind of messy but we ended up living in my auntie's house for a few weeks while we looked for our own housing. During this time, my sister's initial interest in attending a church service was encouraged by my already believing auntie. Just so very happens that she goes to the same church... so they went. My mom tagged along because she was afraid my sister was going to get in trouble. I wasn't very interested and chose to spend my Sundays going through my cousin's comic collection. A way more interesting past time.

This is the chapel that I got baptized in (I think...)

Well, it turned out my mom loved it. She felt her soul stirring in the church and was enthusiastic to know more. By the month end, she's managed to make me go to church with her every Sunday although I despised it. She also began to invite the missionaries over to teach us. They spoke only English though, so there was an ironic period when mom didn't really understand everything being said but she really believed and I understood everything the missionaries talked about, could even recite it back to them but I didn't really care.

The missionaries loved us, but then again, what's not to love about a whole family showing up at church one day saying they're interested in joining! I'm going to skim through this part because my physical conversion turned out to be fairly unrelated to my true conversion. Under my mother's lead, my whole family was soon baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This meant we began to attend 3 hours of church services on Sunday, young woman activity every Wednesday night and 6 am early morning seminary classes every week day. We made feeble attempts to hold Family Home Evenings, we prayed together, we kind of read the scriptures together. Dad quit smoking, we stopped drinking tea and we no longer shopped on Sundays. We were becoming the standard LDS family that you could ever see. And this was after less than 6 months of contact with the church.

a small part of me
will always miss you...

For my part though, this was a difficult time for me. The physical changes were not the hardest part. I missed my lemon tea for a while but it was nothing I couldn't handle. Yet, with every prayer, I felt a little further away from my mom. In a sense, I suppose I was. She continued to grow and advance in her enthusiasm and learning in the church while I hesitated and held back as much as I can. While I understood all the doctrines and teachings, I didn't understand something very fundamental. I didn't comprehend why I needed God in my life. This is all good and dandy. I have nothing against it. I just also have nothing for it. You want it, go for it, why make me do all that stuff too?

On top of that, I felt my family slowly being torn apart. Although my dad was not opposed to joining the church and was baptized himself, he never seemed to be as enthusiastic as mom was. Moreover, the church teaches that father has the responsibility to lead the family. My dad was more of the let things happen on their own type. This soon became a common topic of argument in the house. Mom would expect dad to lead the family in prayer while dad doesn't really care. I felt the disappointment against the passiveness, the expectations unmet, the halfhearted actions... I felt the expectations of the Gospel tore my family apart.

Perhaps part of that was me being in the middle of my teenage years and moving into a new country. Somewhere among all the change, I got really tired of all this stuff. Faking a perfectly happy church life was pretty easy, but I wasn't really interested in all that stuff. I never had a rebellious streak in me though so I continued to be the good little Mormon girl that went to seminary every day and never hung out with friends on Sunday. This time eventually became the first pit in my life though. I fell into a dark hole and for a while came close to ending my own life. I'm not an extremely depressive person. I think it was just logically the easier choice. Dying was easier than faking to live happy. No reason to live = why not die?

It all began with this prayer...

To be fair though, there was one highlight in my church life in Australia. A group of us were sitting around the campfire during one of the young woman camping trips when we noticed one of the girls was missing. She had been in a bad mood that day and she ran off into the woods by herself. It was completely dark by then and I began to panic that she was going to do something stupid. We all stood up and I was ready to go running around the woods with a flashlight like a crazy woman. Then one of the young woman leaders stopped me and suggested that we pray first. I almost yelled at her. She had her way though and we all got in a circle and said a prayer. As we finished and looked up, the girl next to me pointed into the dark and said, "hey! I think I see her!"

Okay. I didn't believe in miracles but that felt like God hitting me in the back of my head and saying, "stop being stubborn." I ignored Him. It was kind of an annoying period of time. I remember accidentally drinking Coke once at a friend's house and feeling really guilty for it. It was ridiculous. I didn't believe in that stuff nor is drinking Coke against the commandments, but I'd still feel guilty. I later realized that although I'm not always very sensitive to the promptings of the Spirit, I am almost always acutely aware of God telling me something is not right. I also picked up swearing for a while and that took a long time for me to get out of my system. And then at one point, I actually planned to end my life on my sixteenth birthday - more of a fleeting thought than hard core plan. To be honest, I don't think I would've have the courage to go through with it anyway, but God never gave me the chance to find out. About six months short of my sweet sixteen, my dad announced that we were going to move back to China.

Moving back to China meant a few things. One, my mom was very insistent that I got my Patriarchal Blessing before we left Australia. We were under the impression that most people got their blessing at sixteen and since I was going to turn sixteen in China - a country without one single Patriarch, it only made sense for me to get it in advance. Due to the sacred nature of the blessing, I won't elaborate here, but the blessing included a specific task that I was to accomplish in the future. Ironically, although I didn't think I believe in the church, I was very convinced that I should follow the instructions on my blessing. That ruined my suicidal plans because the task required me to live pass my sixteenth birthday.

Here's my international school in China

The second impact our move back to China had was the lessening of the church's influence in our life. The church has a very small foothold in the no-longer-communist country. There were less church activities, less members and less expectations. On top of that, my father ended up working and living in a different city, which also lessened the conflicts that were becoming all too familiar in the house. My sister left for college at this point, leaving me the only child in the house. I slowly found my comfort zone again. I got used to living as a member of the church. I got used to being different from other people.



The summer of my Sophomore year in High School, my sister signed me up for the EFY summer camp at BYU. I think it was just her excuse to get us to go visit her :) The summer camp itself was not very memorable. I was the only international kid in my group and I wasn't very interested in all the church-related activities. I actually ended up wandering on my own quite a bit, I remember.
The highlight though, was during one of the meetings, a girl shared her experience with journals. She said she and her friends would write in their journals and once a year, they would have a sleepover. They would name off random dates and read each other what they wrote that day. Okay, that sounds like an awful idea, I don't ever want to read anyone my journal. But for some unknown reason, that little story sparked my interest. I thought it'd be fascinating to be able to name off a random day in the past and be able to flip open your journal and say what happened that day. I started to keep a journal. At first it was monthly, then weekly and eventually, I got into the habit of writing my journal daily. I've yet to stop (it's been 6 years.)

Habit is a very scary thing. Soon enough, I reached my five year mark since my baptism. It was still hard for me to say that I believe in the church but I also wasn't against it. Like I said, lack of a rebellious streak is probably what saved me. God is fair though. He gives blessings for those who believe. He also gives blessings for those who do. Although I didn't feel like I had any faith, I was at least physically keeping all the commandments. So life was going well and smooth. I think by virtue of continuously living the Gospel principles, I gained a testimony that they are good. I think I came to terms with the fact that I'm stuck in this church for life and I'm okay with that.

Then it was time for me to go off to college. Through yet another round of unforeseen circumstances, I ended up at BYU where my sister was studying without much of a choice. The campus is 98% LDS - the exact opposite of the 2% in my high school. Sunday church meetings were held in classrooms and part of the general requirements included 24 religion credits. Being a member was just part of the lifestyle. I did start to consider my stance in the church though. I thought about not going to church and sleeping in on Sundays. There were way too many people for someone to notice a little Asian girl missing. It was easy and no one would know.

Well, no one except my freshman roommate, who turned out to be the nicest and cutest Muslim girl from Palestine. We got along really well. She was dead set on her religion and I wasn't really interested in converting her to my religion. We were also both international students and had many things to talk about. There were definitely times when I went to church only because I know she was watching. She was also required to take some religion classes so she knew full well we were all expected to attend 3 hours of church on Sunday. For the sake of not ruining her impression of the LDS Church. I went to church every Sunday.

This is my beloved campus. The temple is also in the left upper corner there :)

Keep going with life, I was living the bare minimum requirements to be an active member. If there was a way to get out of something I did. I read my scriptures only when my classes required. I didn't go to the temple. I didn't do visit teaching. I didn't really involve myself in church activities. It was just kind of there in the background - part of the university experience. Then I had a really close friend towards the end of my Freshman year. He was preparing to go on his mission. Part of that included him going to received his endowment in the temple. Before he left on his mission, he invited a group of friends to go to the temple together. I don't remember feeling anything special that day but after that, I started to attend the temple often by myself. I think I simply realized it's something I should do. It's really hard to explain why I went to the temple if I felt like I don't really believe in all this. Or perhaps at this point, I really already believed... I just didn't know.


We'll jump around here and just hit some main points. My third year in university, I was called to be the Sunday School class teacher in my ward. This was kind of a stressful calling. I couldn't decide how I felt teaching the gospel without really having a testimony. The first few classes were awful and then I got the hang of things and it was somehow tolerable. I clearly remember my second lesson though. I remember opening the textbook to prepare and I saw the topic - daily personal scripture study. Well. This was going to be uncomfortable. I am yet to understand the point of reading this book over and over again. I already know all the stories. For the sake of not sounding like a complete hypocrite. I read my scriptures every day that week. During my lesson that Sunday, I remember someone raising a question and a scripture I read earlier that week came to mind. As I flipped the scriptures open and read that verse in reply, I thought, "Okay. Fine. I get it. Daily scripture reading helps."

I started to read my scriptures. I didn't read every day. Sometimes only once a week when I prepared for my lessons. Sometimes I could get 4,5 days a week. They weren't exactly periods of enlightenment. I just read. If I didn't understand it, I'd skip over it. Sometimes I skim through the boring parts. Sometimes I read and as I closed the book, I already forgotten what I read that day. It didn't matter. I simply tried to pick the book up whenever I can. And often, scriptures I read that week would become the answers to questions during my Sunday lessons.

You're getting the pattern. God promised that if we live the Gospel principles, we will come to gain a testimony of their truthfulness. I was living the principles simply because I was expected to. I was not really interested in gaining a testimony and understanding why. Yet, the Lord through His ways and means taught me that what I was doing was right. By the time I graduated from university, I've learned that it's important to always pray. I learned the scriptures help. I learned that being in the temple can bring peace into our hearts. I learned going to church is important. I learned about repentance and receiving sweet forgiveness. I learned about signing hymns to help me through hard times.

I learned that this is the church of God.

People asked me how I know the Church is true. I didn't pray and get an answer. I didn't see a vision or witness miracles. I lived by its teachings for eight long years and one day, looking back, I realized that I know this is true.

中文翻譯