Former Kent State student Alexis Corinthos moved to Utah to
immerse herself in her newfound faith. Her move was subsidized by
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
As her shoulder-length blond hair reflects the high Utah sun, Corinthos remembers her first experience with a Mormon more than two years ago. She was just settling in at Kent when she met Andrea Sampsel, who introduced herself as a Mormon.
“I thought she was one of ‘those’ people,” she says. “My parents always shut the door in their faces. I was like, ‘OK, you guys are freaks.’”
Gradually, as Corinthos saw the way Sampsel lived her life, her opinion of the Church of Latter-day Saints changed.
Corinthos was adopted as a child and does not know her biological parents. She describes her childhood as troubled. Her adoptive parents eventually kicked her out of their home.
As she spent time with the Mormons, she began to feel as though someone cared about her again. One cold, snowy night in Canton stands out as the point when she knew the church could become her new family.
“It was freezing,” she says, “and I was standing out in the parking lot explaining my life to the missionaries. I had the first discussion with them, and then the missionaries asked if they could meet with me again. They said, ‘Your life is a story.’ It’s a trust issue for me. I’m sitting here talking to these two gentlemen, and they’re listening to me—they care.”
“I was like, OK, you guys are freaks”
Believing
Mormon Missionaries take each potential convert through a series of five discussions in which they explain the plan of salvation and the structure of the Mormon Church. At the end of these discussions, the missionaries ask “seekers” if they would like to be baptized into the church. At this point, the seekers must make a decision to join the church or discontinue their contact with the missionaries, who are discouraged from making strong personal friendships with non-believers while on their missions.
Corinthos says she did not seriously consider what the Mormons were telling her until her fourth meeting with them. Because she was not raised to be religious, praying was odd.
“I felt calm when I started praying with them,” Corinthos says. “It was really weird. The way I felt was amazing. I’d never felt that safe before. If you feel that in your heart, how can you deny the truth?”
From Catholic to Mormon
Van Camp, a former member of the Catholic Church of St. Louis inLouisville, Ohio, had a slightly different journey of faith. Unlike Corinthos, Van Camp was an active participant in a church prior to her encounter with the Mormons. When she moved to Terrace Hall in 2001 as a freshman at Kent State, she never imagined she could be anything but Catholic. When her best friend moved out of their room, Van Camp ended up rooming with a Mormon woman.
Many Mormons wear a CTR (Choose the Right) ring to remind
them to follow the Mormon scriptures. CTR is a way for Mormons to
create awareness of their faith.
“So she was like, ‘Hi, my name is Christine, I’m Mormon,’” Van Camp says of their first encounter, a broad smile on her face.
Although “it’s kinda taboo to look at another religion if you’re Catholic,” Van Camp says, she and her roommate became close friends. She began to attend Institute, a Book of Mormon study group held on campus by the Latter-day Saint Student Association. The ideas presented were drawing her away from her faith.
Mormons believe their church is the only true church, and other churches lack the priesthood authority granted to the disciples of Jesus to perform baptisms, marriages and other sacraments. Based on the Mormon doctrine, all other religious groups have an incomplete experience of the truth. Sister Quilter, a Kent Mormon missionary, says only the Mormon Church boasts a living and breathing prophet who has the ability to speak the inerrant word of God. Quilter asked that her first name not be used because she was an active missionary at the time of interview, and Mormon missionaries do not use their first names during the mission.
“I decided I didn’t want to study it anymore because I felt it was drawing me away from my faith,” Van Camp says. “I thought, ‘I just need to get over this bull,’ but life was never the same. I longed to be surrounded by Latter-day Saints. I was starting to question what I believed as a Catholic.
“I kept seeing my Mormon friends. I kept bringing (the Mormon faith) up. It was just their example drawing me to their faith. In my heart I was gaining a testimony for the book of Mormon and yearning for a closer relationship with God.”
Van Camp wears a silver CTR or “Choose The Right” ring—the Mormon answer to the largely mainstream Christian “What Would Jesus Do?” or WWJD, jewelry. Only in this case, the right thing Jesus would do would be to follow the book of Mormon, according to former Kent State Mormon missionary Lauren Johnson. The rings are a way of marketing the Latter-day Saints, and they show that Mormonism is the completion of Christianity.
To ease her worries about her newfound Mormon friends, Van Camp sought counsel from a Catholic priest.
“He said Mormons are people we can look up to in the way they live their lives, but at the same time he was kinda cracking on their beliefs,” she says. “I felt like I was being judged. He was saying I didn’t have any faith.”
Over the next few months, Van Camp started comparing Mormons to Catholics.
“I came to find that there were a lot of Catholics who didn’t believe in Catholicism,” she says. “But I couldn’t find any Mormons that didn’t believe. I saw the light of Christ in their lives. I saw peace, comfort, hope, security and faith. I saw people that weren’t judgmental.
“I felt growing up that I was being judged for every Sunday I missed at my Catholic Church. In the Mormon Church, I saw more unity and fellowship and to gain your own testimony. It’s encouraged to question your faith. You’re supposed to pray about it. In the Catholic Church, you don’t question it. You just do it.”
“How can you deny the truth?”
Being Mormon
Van Camp says she does not know how everything will work outnow that she has decided to become a Mormon, but she has found peace at last.
“I feel like I can finally lean on him,” she says of God. “I didn’t know if I would have a job when I moved to Utah. I know things don’t always work like that, but really, I’m not on a journey to find happiness—I’ve found it.”
Van Camp says she wishes “with all her heart” that her family would understand her decision to become a Mormon.
“I know we would be more unified as a family if they came to understand the feeling I have felt,” she says. “I know logically it’s hard to accept at first. But reading this doctrine I’ve come to find power and truth.”
After Van Camp decided to join the church at Funtulis’ wedding in Washington, D.C., she says her parents refused to come to her baptism. “I knew this was what I wanted, but the trials and experiences I had at home were tough,” she says. “It’s hard. You’re sacrificing your family for what you believe to be right.”
As a result of her experiences at home, Van Camp has decided to move to Utah and study at Brigham Young University—its student body is 98 percent Mormon, says Janet Rex, a university spokesperson.
For these Kent State students, Utah—a land of square, logical cities, beautiful snowcapped mountains, great salt wastelands, rugged red rock formations and thousands of Mormons—is the terra firma that answers all the questions they need to know.
Darren Byler is a senior photojournalism major. This is his first time working on The Burr.
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