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Former Member Of
Seventh-day Adventist Church
I'm Going To Tell You Anyway
By Stan Ruggio
I joined the church about six months after I
married a Mormon girl. The only thing that I knew about Mormons was
when our history teacher asked if there were any Mormons in our high
school class and a few kids raised their hand.
I joined the church initially to make my wife
happy. My cousins who are ministers tried to convince me that
Mormons were not Christians, my Grandmother called me the day I got
baptized and told me that "the devil has you for sure".
What I saw was a Christian church where people
practiced what they preached. I didn’t care if it was the true
church of Christ so I did not pray about its truthfulness.
My wife and I went to BYU for three years so I had
the normal religion courses but still no testimony. I went to church
every week and for a while my wife was totally inactive.
After ten years of attending the investigators
class, our mission leader decided to show the movie "The Three
Witnesses". Now for those of you who never saw this 1970’s BYU
production, I can say that there is nothing sad in this movie.
At the end the actors gave the testimonies of the
three witnesses. At that time I had the most wonderful witness from
the Holy Ghost that the Book Of Mormon was the word of God. I had
that warm feeling and I started to cry. (Hey, men from the
inner-city don’t cry for any reason!)
The way I like to tell it is God said "Stan, you
maybe too chicken to ask but I’m going to tell you anyway".
Shortly there after I had a dream about a massive
earthquake, while I was in church, the dream was so real that I
remember every part of it today. In my dream I was not alarmed about
the earthquake but I remember a group of people who were walking
from the sacrament table from left to right across the chapel.
They were very calm. I awoke and then woke my wife
and told her my dream. She said we should pray about it and we did.
The answer that I got was that, Ruggio, you are not doing so bad
(not alarmed) but you still don’t understand (not calm). We again
discussed the answer and determined that the only thing that we were
not doing was that we had never gone to the temple.
We were sealed in 1974 and our testimonies and
faith continue to grow.
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