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An LDS girl, preparing for college, began working at a grocery store where a young Catholic man was earning his way through life. In time, religion came up among their group of workers and a returned missionary friend of the girl gave this young man the Joseph Smith pamphlet.
After reading the tract, he confronted the girl, told her it was all a pack of lies, and that her church could not possibly be the true Church. The girl replied in one simple sentence, “Well, it either is or it isn’t.”
The man later told me that her words had such a profound impact on him that he could not get that sentence out of his mind. It worked on him for weeks until he decided that he had to find out for himself where “it is or it isn’t.” The wheels of conversion were put into motion.
Around the same time, a few miles away, another young man overheard a Mormon girl at his high school tell her friends that she could never imagine herself getting married anywhere but in the temple. He thought, “What’s so special about a building that she would say such a thing? He, too, decided to find out. Again the wheels of conversion were put in motion by a simple statement.
These two girls did not know at the time the impact of their words. (And, no, they did not marry the young men in these stories.) Both men studied the gospel, became converted and served missions. They now reside in the Orange California Stake—Dana Del Francia is on the high council. James Graham is a counselor in the stake presidency. All because of these two statements.
Neither girl attempted to persuade, convince, or convert. Neither had the talents of a Cicero, a Demosthenes, or a Ronald Reagan. They did not marshall fancy arguments; they did not pile on words; they did not see themselves as formal missionaries. Simple statements put the wheels of conversion in motion…and each one of us can do the same.
(Gary C. Lawrence，How Americans View Mormonism （2008 ）Americans View Mormonism, page 117)
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