This is my personal account of sitting, as a non-member, in my Book of Mormon class at Brigham Young University. (You read that right: I was a non-member at BYU.)
As I was sitting in my Book of Mormon class listening to the teacher explain the “plan of salvation/happiness,” I remember seeing in my mind’s eye a tattered and frayed tapestry becoming whole. It was not like anything I had ever experienced before; I am not a tapestry kind of person, but there it was in my mind. Throughout my younger years, I had pestered the pastors of my church with questions about the nature of God and what happened to us after we died. They did their best to answer the questions, but so often the conversation ended with, “There are some things to which we don’t know the answer. It’s these mysteries that are the beauty of the gospel.” I was discouraged and unsettled by their responses, but the years of questions, fears, and doubts I had suddenly were gone as I heard the truth. I still had much to learn, but I was sure I had found something incredible. There were other experiences and many other people that assisted in gathering me, but I consider this one of the foundational spiritual experiences to which I have been able to anchor myself against times of doubt, stress, and temptation.