A Bit of my History and My Testimony
D. E. (Don) Neighbors
I grew up attached to no particular church. My dad, after being called down by the preacher in front of the entire congregation for the crime of holding hands with his girlfriend, swore at the age of 16 he would never go to church again. My mom had developed doctrinal questions which the minister of the church her family attended could not answer to her liking, so she was in search of a good church for many years. Since Dad was in the Air Force, we moved around a lot and essentially attended whatever church was close by, or which interested us. Along the way, somehow I became the kid – there would be five of us – that seemed most interested in religion. After learning to read, I became an inveterate reader, which would in time guide me towards the LDS faith.
When I was nine our family returned to Kansas, where my mom’s family was from, because Uncle Sam had ordered my dad to Clark Air Force Base, in the Philippines. As a result, we attended the same church my mom grew up a member of. At some point, I realized that what the Bible taught about the nature of the Godhead did not match the triune God the preacher talked about from the pulpit. I mentioned this to him one day, in the presence of my mother. The minister, no doubt remembering Mom had been a difficult teenager in his congregation, gave Mom a dirty look, but did not respond much to my remark. Around this time – and I cannot remember now what inspired me to think this – I began to think that John 10:16meant that the Savior had visited the New World. I think it was later that I began to find scraps of legends and stories of the bearded white god in a variety of sources. In late 1970, inspired by Thor Heyerdahl’s “Ra Expeditions,” I became more convinced that the Savior had visited theNew World. I also began to develop a deep interest in Meso-American history.
In time, I met an LDS girl on the school bus, the first genuine Mormon I had ever met, and we began talking about religion. In the last couple of churches I had attended, I had heard a bit about the Mormons, all of it bad, so I immediately tried to show how wrong her religion was.
Somehow, things did not work as I had planned.
After a few discussions, I began to realize that theLDSChurchtaught what I had already come to believe. Eventually she talked me into going to Sacrament with her, and then to go to an Independence Day dance. This was in 1977. I had been taught in other churches that dancing was evil, and had been taught – unsuccessfully, I might add – that rock music was evil and country/western was not, so the idea of a dance at a church was rather a novelty. We walked into the Cultural Hall, where rock music was playing and people were dancing, and the Holy Ghost was there. I felt his presence as soon as I walked through the gym doors, and it goes without saying it was a heady experience. I began attending Sacrament meetings regularly, and not long afterward I was introduced to the (lady) missionaries, one of whom was fromMexico. She asked if I believed in prophets, but I was thinking along the lines of supermarket tabloid prophets like Jean Dixon, and gave an answer along those lines. She explained to me that wasn’t what she was talking about, and then offered me a Book of Mormon which had been marked up, and asked me to read it.
I didn’t touch it for a few days, but one afternoon when I had some time on my hands, I crawled up on my bunk bed in the bedroom I shared with my brothers, propped up on a couple of pillows, and began reading. The missionary had of course marked those parts of 3 Nephi that testified of Jesus’ arrival in theNew World. After five minutes of reading, I sat bolt upright in my bed and said, “THIS IS IT!” I knew at that moment that the Savior had indeed come to theAmericas, as He had promised He would, and that the Book of Mormon contained a record of that visit. I finished reading the rest of 3 Nephi and began at the beginning so I could read the entire book, a task which I finished within a couple of weeks.
Of course, the missionaries soon asked if they could come to our house to teach the lessons. However, I knew that I needed to get my mom’s permission. I may have been eighteen, but it was the house she and Dad were paying for, after all. My mom, as it happened, was curious about the religion I was becoming interested in, and wanted to check it out herself. So it was that I was able to invite them into our home and change our family’s course through life.
By this time of my life (I would soon be nineteen) I was drinking a lot of coffee and I was developing a taste for cigars. I was also working a night shift at a nearby factory. One afternoon the missionaries taught the lesson about the Word of Wisdom, and it was with this lesson on my mind that I went to work that night. One of my co-workers offered me a cigar, which would turn out to be the worst cigar I ever smoked. At one point during the evening I also got a cup of coffee, which I finished at myworkstation. After I drained the cup, I looked into it, at the bottom, and then set the empty cup beside me. That would be the last cup of coffee I would ever drink. I had no problems with any withdrawal from the habit, and I knew in my heart that I was doing the right thing by quitting. For me, it was that simple.
By the end of October the missionaries challenged us tobaptism, and early that November I, my mother, and one of my sisters were indeed baptized. I was ordained a Priest a week later, and on Christmas Day 1977 I baptized my youngest sister and one brother. I baptized my youngest brother when he came of age in May 1978, and I baptized my father a decade later. The events leading to his baptism are another story for another time.
I have, since my baptism, taken the opportunity to go beyond the regular manuals and learn what I can about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have also done what I can to learn and learn about the Bible and the times in which the Bible came together. I can solidly testify that I know that Joseph Smith cannot have written the Book of Mormon either by himself or with help. The information necessary to create from whole cloth an even barely credible record like the Book of Mormon was simply unavailable to him. My testimony of the Book of Mormon is built not only on faith, but also on academic knowledge. I KNOW the Book of Mormon is an ancient record and meant to be part of the Scripture canon. I have believed since before I was LDS that God and His Son are two different personages. The great thing I appreciate about the Church is that its doctrine makes sense, and that when I have had a question I could find an answer. Do I believe the Church to be true, that Joseph Smith and all of his successors are Prophets called of God?
You bet your life I do.