I'm going to try to express this thought as unoffending as I can. I haven't talked about religious topics a lot in the past but I have been thinking a lot about something today and want to express it with my other thoughts.

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (known by many as mormons or LDS) I find it strange sometimes how people react once they know you are a "mormon" and you are talking about religious topics. Their first reaction is "Oh man....he's going to try to convert me now" and while it is true that I would love to share the gospel with anyone who will listen, I respect everyone's right to worship as they wish. That's one of the things that makes America so great.

Well if I can get beyond that first reaction with someone and continue a religious discussion about anything, they are usually so sure that we don't believe in the same things, when most of the time we do. What has really surprised me over the last few years is peoples astonishment at the fact that I and many other millions of members believe that we have a prophet here on this earth today and that Christ's church has been restored on this earth just as is prophesied in the bible.

I guess the reason why it surprises me so much is that when I am talking to anyone who truly believes in Christ and the bible, then they also believe and understand that prophets have been on the earth since the creation and through all time until after Christ's life and all the apostles had all died. In my mind it is hard to imagine that there would be no need for prophets anymore since they were part of so much of our history.

A lot of people are so afraid of being "converted" as if it was a disease and was contagious that they refuse to even have an open mind to find the truth themselves and find it outrageous that I could believe in something like that. What I see is just history repeating itself again and again. There are many scritural accounts of people refusing to believe in prophets when they are still alive, but after they are long gone, people find it much easier to believe in them because their prophecies have become truths.