Broken Adventists and the Friend Who Found Help in the Mormon Church

In addition to that, I recently had a conversation with a friend who grew up Seventh-day Adventist. I ran into him at the grocery store, and I said, “Hey, what’s new with you?” And he kind of, you know, we did some small talk for a while. Then he said, “Hey, I feel comfortable telling you this. I’ve got something to tell you.” I said, “What’s going on, man?” He said, “I’m getting baptized.” I said, “Praise the Lord.” He goes, “As a Mormon.” I said, “What?” He said, “Yeah, yeah, as a Mormon. I knew I could be safe enough telling you this.”

And he went on to describe to me—this gentleman grew up Seventh-day Adventist, at a pretty well-known medical missionary center in the church—and he just told me what he saw a lot of growing up. Over and over, he saw a lot of divorces, a lot of affairs, a lot of rude people, a lot of critical people, a lot of people that were not very nice to him. He was a little bit socially awkward, and they didn’t know how to deal with him properly.

He also told me about a not-too-kind of recent experience he had. He was at a pilot launch of a new Seventh-day Adventist medical missionary establishment—him and another friend of mine were helping launch their new pilot program, the first ten-day program. He said, “Gabe, you know what we did the night before the opening of this new medical missionary center? Me and Sister So-and-so (I will leave unnamed) spent the night before the opening trying to convince the director, who is a doctor, and his wife not to get divorced. That’s what we spent the night before the opening doing—convincing them, ‘Dude, please do not get divorced.’” You know, what can you say? You just got to listen to someone at that point and try to empathize with their experience.

So I asked, “But why did you get baptized as a Mormon?” And he went on to explain that they helped him with his mental health—which I was really surprised by, because the missionaries in that church aren’t really well known for that. That’s not like what they’re well known for, but somehow, someway, they did it. And you know what he was able to see? He was able to see that he’d been hiding his inner soul his whole life, and he had never let people in due to the fear that they would be disgusted by what they saw and that he would be rejected. And that came out during this conversation with the Mormons. It just did something for him. And he said, “Gabe, I don’t even fully believe in their doctrines. I know it’s kind of weird, but Gabe, they helped me. They helped me like the Adventists were never able to.” That just … ah. They helped him with his mental health. He doesn’t even believe all their stuff.