The first time I went to the temple was about a month and a half after my baptism. It was the day after Thanksgiving. I had just introduced the girl who had given me the Book of Mormon to my family (from here on, merely the girl). It was odd to me how much better she was at talking to my cousins and aunts and uncles than I was. It turns out that she had a ton more experience dealing with family than I did, as my family only ever got together for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and my brother and I were the ones who snuck off and ignored them. Speaking of my brother, perhaps my most memorable moment of that Thanksgiving was going over to his house with the girl. He opened the door, wearing nothing but his boxers, and thus my normal life was introduced to my new religious life.

Anyway, the next day, we drove over to the St. Louis Temple, me, the girl, Jon, some other girl, and the brother of Jon. Who is Jon, you ask? Well, Jon is the guy who I met the first time I went to church and who has basically been over at my apartment every day since then. Jon is the guy who asks me crazy questions about the religion he has been a member of his whole life that I have to go look up because he really wants to know. Jon is the guy who told me to buy a beer the day before I was baptized, as it would be my last chance. (I didn’t). Jon is awesome. Jon is Mormonism.

3 Hours pass. The girl wonders who these crazy people are. We arrive at the temple. It is big white and beautiful. We walk in. The handsome man at the front desk looks over our paperwork and then the lovely lady shows us the way to the stairs to the baptistry. We descend.

Reaching the landing, I am overcome by the spirit and back into the corner. It is impossible to write what I felt, which is unfortunate, because the point of writing this was to try and capture that moment. But I cannot.

The girl asks, “Are you ok?”

“Yeah” I say.

And we continued on, but it was in that moment that my step into the darkness, my leap of faith, was vindicated.  I am very grateful for that moment.

Have you had a moment were you felt your beliefs were vindicated? When was it?