Faith & Knowledge — What is a Mormon?

My daughter told me about this blog she found and how she really liked what the girl had to say so I told her to forward it to me so that I could read it as well. It was definitely worth reading. The young lady that is giving all this information is obviously about the same age as my Daughter, and having a defined definition like this lady does of what she believes in is amazing at this age. Not only that, I love that she approaches the subject with the attitude of you must go to the source to get the truth. I think that many people, and not just dealing with Religion should go to a source and not make a judgement or opinion based off hearsay. I have bolded what I felt where some of the best points made and anything in Pink is my own thoughts or opinion — Enjoy.

“My name is Keaton Compton and I am a Mormon, and in this blog I’m gonna answer some of your Mormon questions you may ask yourself. First I’d like to say that if you wanna now about a Mormon, then ask a Mormon because there is no tellin what craziness people will fill your head with about Mormons.



A Mormon is simply a Christian Religion, and nothing more. So heres the deal we do not worship false Gods (This is one of the biggest misconceptions out there about the LDS Faith) by any means unless you consider Jesus Christ a false god because that is who we worship to, pray to, and want to be with one day. Most of the time we get criticized because we are one of the fastest growing churches, and some simply do not wanna believe. You do not have to call us Mormons. We actually prefer being called Latter Day Saints or LDS for short.



Mormons believe in a little thing called preexistence which is basically where we were before Earth life. We do not remember this because we pass through another thing called the veil. As crazy as it sounds it got 13,000,000 people believing it. Know so here we are on Earth. While we are on Earth we have this book called the Holy Bible that helps us understand things much better. Throughout time parts the Bible have been lost and mistranslated and that is where, in my opinion the book of Mormon comes in.



The Book of Mormon is what sets us apart from any other Christian religion. Every thing written in the Book of Mormon supports the Bible 100%. You may be wondering how we got this book and it’s very simple. In 1820 a boy no older than 15 was struggling to find the right religion. After a series of prayers this young man by the name of Joseph Smith had a vision of the the holy father and the son and they were basically telling him that none of the religions were the right ones. So he continues to pray and then he stumbles (Stumbles is quite the paraphrase, He was guided and told by an Angel) upon Golden plates (book of Mormon) which he translated in a short time period with the help of the lord.



Is it so hard to believe that a boy had a vision when you do not have a hard time believing that moses split the sea and David Slain Goliath. So that is pretty much how we got the Book of Mormon.



In the LDS religion we have a modern day prophets just like they did in the Bible that guide us in making the right decisions. (Just like a pastor, preacher, priest, etc guides a congregation we are guided too.) Our prophets name is Thomas S. Monson. 



Mormons do not smoke, swear, drink, have sex before married, murder, and many more. All of these are considered sins in our church. If we do sin we have something called repentance so that we can be forgiven for our sins, although it is not as easy as it sounds. (Keaton has really simplified this, she is right we are encouraged not to smoke, drink, or partake of coffee and tea, but just like everyone else we are not perfect. In the LDS Faith you are taught that your body is a temple and why would you want to harm that temple. Also just like any other Christian Faith we believe that you should behave, act, and respect yourself as if the Lord was in your presence — that you would not be ashamed of your actions, thoughts, etc.  We also believe that if you are strong in the covenants that you have made with the Lord,  then you will have the blessing of the Holy Ghost to help guide you to make the right decisions — to meet His expectations.)



Latter Day Saints have Missionaries which are servants of the Lord. You may have seen them walking around your town. They all look the same. They where White shirts and ties. They leave at the age of 19 or 20, and return after 2 years. Your religion may have missionaries as well. One of the main differences between our missionaries is that ours do not get paid because we believe that service for the Lord is not a paying job. (Service is a big part of how we live our daily lives.) So yes we actually have to pay a good bit to go on missions. When missionaries get sent off they go to any random place around the world that our prophet or other church leaders tell us to go. I am going to be a missionary.



Mormons get baptized and forgiven for their sins just like any other Christian religion. We also believe in baptism for the dead. Which means people that have died that never had a chance to hear about the church get another shot. So we do a good bit of genealogy. This occurs in temples, “like the ones in the Bible”.

 (Baptism for the Dead is one of the hardest things for people to understand. What a lot of people don’t realize is that all LDS members whether converted or raised LDS go through this time of understanding and having/gaining Faith just like everyone else and trying to make the right decision.)

Every morning at 6:00 Young adults at the age of 14-17 attend a class called seminary. In this class we study the scriptures (Book of Mormon & Bible). So yes I attend this Event. We do not attend seminary on weekends or the summer. (Although my Daughter behaves and does some of the same things that other teenagers do, I have seen her grow spiritually for attending Seminary. She believed in Jesus Christ before she started and now she truly loves Him, respects what He has done for us, and I think is truly a better person for it — and yes that makes me have warm-I-am-proud Mommy fuzzies.) 



There is really so much more to this subject and I would go on 4 ever but I do not wanna bore you so I’ll stop here hoping that this blog will change the way that people think of Mormons.



Thanx for reading this blog. If you wanna a Book of Mormon than let me know. I’ll give you one for free”

Side note for Keaton if she gets here to read my blog, Darling make sure you capitalize all references for God the Father, His Son, and the Holy Ghost in your next blog.