One of my first close friends in Florida was a married women with two kids who had been baptized the day before our first day in the ward in Boca. She bore her testimony that Sunday about how the church had changed her life and about some difficult things in her past, including an abortion. She was not from American and had, more particularly, been raised in a culture that perpetuated manipulating businesses, government, etc., to her advantage.

With some other woman we formed a co-op preschool and became good friends. Almost every time we were together she would start relating an incident and then stop cold, recognizing, for the first time, the meaning of her past choices. Once, she was telling me how she manipulated store policies to get her kids every new cool toy and all the lates clothing styles without ever really paying for any of them. It started as kind of a boast, but she stopped mid-story and said, “Wait. I bet Mormons don’t do that, do they?”

It was amazing to watch her learn and grow and think with a new paradigm. Much like David, I grew to appreciate a bit of the struggle it was to so drastically change choices, behavior, culture. The transformation is admirable.

Thank you for writing this story, Rosalynde, and many thanks to David for sharing his experiences.