Anthony James Alvarez's Conversion Story

My name is Anthony Alvarez and I am a new member of the Church. I am a 34 year old re-entry student at UC Davis in the History Department in my final year of study. I was born and raised in San Francisco, California. Three weeks ago, Brother Nye invited me to share the story of my conversion with you. To say that I feel honored to be able to share my experience with you is an understatement. It’s difficult to describe exactly what it is that I feel these days except to say that whatever it is, it often becomes so overwhelming that I frequently find the need to shut my eyes just to hold back the tears.

I’d be lying if I told you that my initial attraction to the Church was anything more than lukewarm. When the missionaries approached me in mid-May, there was not some compelling force driving me toward the Book of Mormon. Nor was there some dire calamity pushing me into a spiritual awakening. My attitude towards the missionaries’ proposals was something along the lines of “Why not? What could it hurt?” Fortunately for me, the missionaries were much more persistent in cultivating my happiness than I was. To be sure, my attraction towards anything good in my life for me has always been tepid whereas my attraction towards all things toxic always seemed to triumph. In personal relationships, for example, I’ve often found myself bored with normalcy and fascinated with dysfunction. So for me, an initial lack of enthusiasm for the Church was actually a very good sign.

So on one cloudy afternoon in May, Sister Wang and Sister Tanumaipea knocked on my door and asked me what I thought about God. It was a concept that I had been struggling with for at least an entire year prior. The answer I gave the Sisters was this: God is something that I could never and should never truly understand. Sister Tanumaipea’s rebuttal was simple: Our Heavenly Father loves us and all He wants is for us to be happy. I didn’t realize it on that day, but in the subsequent weeks I came to understand that the Sisters’ message what I had been waiting to hear my entire life.

During those first lessons with the missionaries, my agenda was to rationalize whatever I found either far-fetched or esoteric. At some point we discovered that I was just making it much more complicated than it needed to be. It must have been especially entertaining for Sister Wang and Sister T to watch me intellectually tap dance my way toward understanding our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation.

The aspects of the Church that rang most true to me were those that many people seem to have the biggest issues with. The Law of Chastity. The Word of Wisdom. Tithing. Service. In my experience, these are universal truths; common sense approaches to life’s problems that just seem to work. I had lived in opposition to these truths for a very long time and I assure you—that type of lifestyle does not work.

One of the biggest leaps of faith for me was coming to believe in Joseph Smith and President Thomas S. Munson. That answer came to me when one of our visiting members from Utah, Trent Simmons, discussed the beauty of personal revelation during a quorum meeting. What I learned from Trent was that God speaks to each and every one of us every day. The more sincerely and diligently we follow his commandments, the better we can hear Him. I truly believe that through their extraordinary piety, in obedience to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith and our Church president have established the clearest channel of communication with our Heavenly Father and that their words must be heeded by all of us.

The following is paraphrased from what I can best remember. It was added during my testimony:

[Someone once asked me how my life has changed since my baptism. Last week an old friend from back home sent me a text. He said he was having an “existential crisis”. One of his close friends was killed in Afghanistan the previous week. My friend told me “There is no God.” Usually, I am at a loss whenever people close to me are going through crises. I’ve never known what to say. But at that moment, I instantly knew two things. First, I knew I had to say something. Secondly, without hesitation, I knew exactly what I wanted to him to know. I sent him a text back, “There is a God and He loves you. The fact that you loved your brother so much to feel this emptiness when he’s gone is proof that there is a God and he’s given us these feelings to understand what’s really important.”]

Before I close I’d like to share a few things. First, a reading from Ether that the sister missionaries had me read aloud during one of our first lessons together. It was the first verse that I knew to be true as I read it: Ether 12: 27 “And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.” If you’d like to know what that verse actually means to me, and you have a few hours to spare, please see me after the meeting.

Lastly, I’d like to leave you with a short parable from the opening chapter of a popular self-help book by Eckhart Tolle. A begger had been sitting on the side of the road for over 30 years. One day a stranger walks by and the beggar asks him for some change. The stranger replies “I’m sorry, I have nothing to give you. But what’s that you’re sitting on?” The beggar replies. “Oh, it’s nothing, just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.” “Have you ever looked inside?” asks the stranger. “No, what’s the point? There’s nothing inside,” replies the beggar. The stranger insists and challenges the beggar to open the box and when the beggar finally pries it open, he discovers to his amazement and disbelief that the box is filled with gold.

The Church is true. I have been sitting on this box for as long as I can remember, never aware that it would be the one thing that would end up saving my life. I say these things in the name of our savior Jesus Christ. Amen.