Podcast: Download (53.4MB)
Subscribe: RSS
Early on in life, Jennifer Roach was raised in a broadly Evangelical Christian setting. Being taught the Bible early on, Jennifer has had a love for sacred scripture. Her inquisitive nature and her spiritual passion took her to Divinity School, where she earned a Masters Degree in Divinity. Through her studies, she became interested in the Anglican faith where she became an ordained Anglican Minister.
Through interactions with a Latter-day Saint reporter that was covering a story to which Jennifer was involved earlier in life, Jennifer would ask questions about the faith she was taught was evil and should be avoided. Her inquisitive nature brought her to ask several questions over email, and to begin a study of the Pearl of Great Price and Book of Mormon.
One day as she was driving to work, she stopped and saw some Sister Missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, walking the side of the road. She felt impressed to stop and connect with them. She took a selfie with the Sisters and sent it to her reporter friend, Garth Stapley, to show that she was actually going to talk with the missionaries.
Over the next 9 months Jennifer would go through some amazing experiences, address a number of questions both at Church and with the Missionaries, before being baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Listen to this episode of the Latter-day Saint MissionCast to hear the full story.
Jennifer would encounter a number of online sources about the Church, some positive, some negative, including the CES Letter. She would use sources, like FairMormon and the Gospel Topics essays to help her navigate the many questions she had. Her research brought her to a faithful position, and one that has helped her endure the challenges that have come to her life as a result of her decision.
This episode is the first time that Jennifer has told this story to the general public in a podcast. If you want to follow her blog and connect with Jennifer, visit her blog myconvertlife.com
This episode was produced and first released on the Latter-day Saint MissionCast. The Latter-day Saint MissionCast is not a production of FairMormon.
A native of southern California, Daniel C. Peterson received a bachelor’s degree in Greek and philosophy from Brigham Young University (BYU) and, after several years of study in Jerusalem and Cairo, earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Peterson is a professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at BYU, where he has taught Arabic language and literature at all levels, Islamic philosophy, Islamic culture and civilization, Islamic religion, the Qur’an, the introductory and senior “capstone” courses for Middle Eastern Studies majors, and various other occasional specialized classes. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on Islamic and Latter-day Saint topics–including a biography entitled Muhammad: Prophet of God (Eerdmans, 2007)—and has lectured across the United States, in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and at various Islamic universities in the Near East and Asia. He served in the Switzerland Zürich Mission (1972-1974), and, for approximately eight years, on the Gospel Doctrine writing committee for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He also presided for a time as the bishop of a singles ward adjacent to Utah Valley University. Dr. Peterson is married to the former Deborah Stephens, of Lakewood, Colorado, and they are the parents of three sons.
René Alexander Krywult, a native of Vienna, Austria, Europe, has been a member of FairMormon for over eighteen years and has been instrumental in founding the German-speaking FairMormon group. He is a software developer and project manager for a European financial institution. He is married to Gabriele Krywult, and they have four children and three grandchildren. His first publication was “Mormon Deification Compared to Orthodox Christian Theosis” in the magazine Spirituality in East and West of Dialog Center International, a Protestant network of organizations engaged in researching new religious movements. More articles on the FairMormon website followed. He organized four FairMormon conferences in Germany from 2009 to 2015 and spoke at all of them.
Huh? How could that be? I knew I’d just unplugged the phone.
Don Bradley is a writer, editor, and researcher specializing in early Mormon history. Don recently performed an internship with the Joseph Smith Papers Project and is completing his thesis, on the earliest Mormon conceptions of the New Jerusalem, toward an M.A. in History at Utah State University. He has published on the translation of the Book of Mormon, plural marriage before Nauvoo, and Joseph Smith’s “grand fundamental principles of Mormonism” and plans to publish an extensive analysis, co-authored with Mark Ashurst-McGee, on the Kinderhook plates. Don’s first book was The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Missing Contents of the Book of Mormon (being published soon).
John Lynch is a Silicon Valley sales and marketing executive specializing in high-tech startup ventures. He is a member of the Board of Directors of FAIR and serves as its Chairman. Having served in many missionary callings, including twice as a Stake Mission President, multiple times as a Ward Mission Leader, and having worked at the Provo Missionary Training Center as a teacher and trainer, John has seen the impact of both well-prepared and poorly prepared defenders of the faith.
