January 13, 2015
My heart
beats for ‘The Piano Guys’. They are by far the greatest artists our world can
offer. I like to describe their style of music as a modern kind of classical
music, or modern music with a classic touch. The Piano Guys are musical
geniuses and I really adore them. There is a big Piano Guys Poster in my room,
I wear my Fan-Shirt with pride, played one of their songs for my school-leaving
exam (Abitur) in music, and I never
take off my Piano Guys wristband because I am totally convinced that it brings
me good fortune.
But what
does all of this have to do with religion? Well, a while ago The Piano Guys
posted a picture in a social network. No big deal, I know, but it showed them
in front of a large building with the words, “The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints” on it. The picture plus the caption made it obvious that they were
members of that church. I think it was in 2013 so it was still during my
religion-critical phase.
Of course,
being a huge fangirl, I had to google it immediately. I quickly found out that
members of this church are also called “Mormons”. That was a shock for me;
there were billions of prejudices in my head instantly. Aren’t those the ones
with the many wives!?
I told my
mother about it and her reaction was similar to mine. “Well, that explains why
they’ve got so many kids. They probably have many wives and they aren’t allowed
to use contraceptives,” she said. Everyone I told it reacted kinda like that.
No one had anything good to say about Mormons.
I had the
urge to protest. I wanted to defend The Piano Guys. They were my idols. My
heroes. It was impossible for me to believe that they had mistakes! And that’s
when I started to do research on Mormons. I found out that most of the
prejudices weren’t true…they were absolutely wrong in fact. Mormons weren’t
allowed to have many wives nowadays, and they were also no racists - which my
father claimed they were. In addition I found out that many people I really
looked up to were Mormons or Latter-day Saints, how they preferably call themselves.
Even Mitt Romney is one! (whom I don’t like by the way).
I did more
research, joked that I wanted to become a Mormon “because the Piano Guys are
Mormons”. My friends always laughed about it of course and called me crazy.
They thought I was kidding… and I thought I was kidding too. But I somehow
couldn’t let go of it. The more I read, the more I got interested in it.
Secretly I was hoping that a Mormon would talk to me on the streets, just like
Jehovah’s witnesses always did. I didn’t even know if that was something they
did, I only knew that we had a Mormon church somewhere close to where I lived.
Someday I came across the website “Mormon.org” and started to read it through. It was a
good site with incredibly interesting information. Or at least I found them to
be very interesting. I really liked the fact that Latter-day Saints didn’t
drink or do drugs because that was something I never did too and never wanted
to do. It always made me feel uncomfortable when I went out with friends
because I never really knew how to explain myself.
I also
watched videos on YouTube about Mormons and what they believe in. Yeah, I found
some really weird stuff too and a few comments underneath some videos were
absolutely amusing but I tried to choose my sources wisely and mostly used
official sites and channels of the church. I even started to listen to the
first chapters of “The Book of Mormon” on YouTube.
It was New
Year’s Eve when I decided to fill in a form on that website. I talked about it
with my parents and sisters first and they said I should just do it already…
probably because I was getting on their nerves. But they didn’t think I would actually do it. They had no idea that I
had been toying with the idea of maybe becoming
a Mormon for quite a while now.
After I had
filled in the form and quickly sent it away (so that I couldn’t change my mind)
it said that Missionaries would contact me soon. Those Missionaries were
usually young men and women around my age, that much I had already read. Still,
I thought they would probably be like the Mad Hatter or all the Jehovah’s
Witnesses I had met in my life. When I told my parents that I had really sent away
the form they made fun of me, saying “I would never ever be able to get rid of
them again”.
(To be
continued…)
