Car­son, I am not raised in the Church but rather I am a “con­vert”. In decid­ing, through much prayer and read­ing, I decid­ed to be Bap­tized ful­ly aware that I might not have all of my ques­tions answered and not expect­ing the full­ness of the gospel until some­time in the after­life… I, vic­ar­i­ous­ly, know you as your broth­er had dat­ed my daugh­ter, Lind­say Baugh, many years ago. I would hate for her to be led astray when she is so bright (IQ of 145) and can study and han­dle con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion just fine. I have three chil­dren and by the grace of Jesus Christ, all three of them have strong tes­ti­monies. Two of them have con­vert spous­es. I believe they have made the deci­sion, with an adult mind, to be bap­tized. I accept­ed the LDS teach­ings know­ing that much was yet to be revealed. I have admit­ted to my Bishop(s) that I do not usu­al­ly wear my gar­ments with­out fear. It has nev­er been a prob­lem except that it is some­thing that I need to work on. I’ve been to MANY Church­es seek­ing the right one for me. Many were hyp­o­crit­i­cal, or (as the Catholic reli­gion), too sym­bol­ic on an every week basis. Many Church­es had Sun­day mem­bers whose con­gre­ga­tions did not prac­tice what is taught any day but Sunday.

Part of my accep­tance of the LDS Church was the real­iza­tion that I can’t know every­thing in this life and I don’t expect to. The church has evolved and expect that it will con­tin­ue to do so. This will not turn me away. I believe in the core prin­ci­ples and don’t allow the “lit­tle stuff” to both­er me. Being quite bright myself, I would be very irri­tat­ed if some­one tried to hand feed me dis­crep­an­cies and con­tra­dic­tion. I don’t have a hang-up with them myself. I feel very sad for you, Marisa, and your fam­i­lies because you could have just quit going rather than becom­ing an apos­tate and try­ing to take oth­er peo­ple with you.

God Bless you, Marisa, and your fam­i­ly. God loves you all very much. I hope that I haven’t offend­ed you.