I grew up in Salt Lake City. My parents were married in the LDS temple and quite active in that faith. When Mom died of breast cancer when I was just eight years old, my father turned to alcohol and later became an alcoholic. As the youngest of eight children, my father was not in a position to care for me, so I was shuffled around to other family and friends for over two years. Moving around so much made it very hard to have a family structure and build solid friendships.

My father remarried and had three more children, and I moved back in with him and his new wife. I continued to attend the Mormon Church in honor of his requests, but I struggled with teenage temptations and eventually fell away from all LDS involvement. Yet through those experiences, I clung to the belief that there must be a living God and prayed that one day I would know and understand what His purpose for this life was all about.

My wife Kristin also came from a very active LDS family and suffered many childhood struggles as well. Her parents divorced when she was three and both later remarried. She was baptized Mormon when she was 11 — being taught it was “the right thing to do” — but she never believed that all she had been taught was actually true. If there really was a God, she knew there had to be something more out there.

Kristin and I were married in 1992. We began having a lot of struggles, but we didn’t believe in divorce. We knew we couldn’t give up, but we also knew we needed help. Neither of us were interested in returning to the Mormon Church because we never felt like we could live up to the standards of that religion, nor did we ever really believe in it. We wanted God in our life and marriage, but we didn’t know where to turn.

One day we received a flyer on our doorstep inviting us to The Rock Church. The flyer asked, “Do you want to strengthen your marriage? Be better parents? Do you want to go to a church without all the guilt? Do you want to have a real relationship with God?” YES, that's exactly what we wanted! How did they know? We decided to visit one of the services and were totally blown away by what we heard. We COULD have a personal relationship with God. That’s WHY Jesus came to this earth! For the first time in our lives, everything finally made sense.

From that day forward, nothing has ever been the same. Even though we still have daily struggles, we know we have a God to Whom we can turn, as well as great pastors and a wonderful church family. We’re so thankful to God for His free gift of love and grace, and we’re so blessed to know the reality that only the Bible teaches. It’s also such a blessing to have others at our church who understand our past experience and know what we’ve gone through with our families. It’s been very difficult for both of us and we continue to get a lot of pressure from our families (I’m still the only one in my family who does not practice the LDS faith), but we continue to pray that one day they too might also find the truth.