Conversion Story

I am not really sure where this saga belongs in the story of my life here on earth, so I will add it now...this is the story of my Conversion to the LDS Church:

Even growing up as a little girl outside the gospel, I knew I had a Father in Heaven and had a powerful pull to connect with Him. I think it is innate, we are His children, created in His image, He loves us and wants what every parent wants for their children (and maybe more since He is divine)! We lived with Him for a long long time…an eternity, before we arrived here on earth. So our spirits know Him well. If we pause and ponder; sometimes I think we even have this homesickness for our heavenly home that we cannot put our finger on, an aching to be back or to connect with that peace and that place of love we left. Prayer is a natural extension of a desire to talk to our Father whom we miss. From a young age I relied on and accessed prayer. I do not officially remember being taught to pray, but I never remember not praying. I grew up in an inactive, part-member home. My mother was a member of the LDS Church but lived in a town with only a few members and married outside the church. She believed my dad would join, but that did not happen for many years and many prayers later. My father was a college president and wanted his children to learn for themselves which church we wanted to join. So like Joseph Smith, I attended many churches growing up…Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Valley Christian.

I do not think it was a coincidence that in 2nd grade, the age most members are baptized, I remember getting a card in grade school to fill out our religion. I marked Valley Christian because that is where I was attending and then added LDS or Mormon because that is where I wanted to go. I got called to the principal’s office; pretty scary at 8, but even at that age I was thinking of religion and praying to join the LDS church. At 10 in my Little Kitty diary my New Year’s resolution was to join the LDS church, of course I was still praying for this blessing as well. At 14, I started driving myself to the Mormon Church. It was intimidating to find a place to sit by myself and being told the seat was saved or going to Young Women's (Mutual or MIA in those days) to be asked why I came since I was not a member of that church, but I kept going. At 16, I was dating a young man in the ward with a big blonde afro who was getting ready to go off to BYU and he shared with me some true confessions, so shared with him I was not really a member of his church. He gave me the courage to proceed and I wrote a letter asking my father if I could indeed be baptized. Not only did I get permission, my parents came and supported the event even thanking the young man who baptized me.

I was so grateful for that answer to my prayers; it had taken me eight extra years, twice as long as most baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints, but I finally accomplished that portion of my journey. I still prayed to be able to be sealed to my whole family. I could not imagine a heaven without them. Three months after his mission I was married in the Temple to the boy who baptized me, none of my immediate family was able to attend, but another part of my prayers came true, I was sealed to my eternal companion! However, the desire of my heart was to have my whole family receive those temple blessings and be sealed in my family chain. I continued to pray. In the late 1980s my mom was finally able to go through the temple, since it had not been allowed before that time if you had a non-member spouse. Then I gave birth to a son that started fasting when he was only six years old for my dad to join the church and he told my father that when he was 16 he planned to baptize him...and he did! When KC was 16 years old and 6 foot 6 inches tall, he baptized my 67 year old father. My dad was not ready for the temple for seven more years. Finally in December 2012 my parents were sealed in the Twin Falls Idaho Temple and I was finally sealed to my parents at 53 years old! I had been praying for over 40 years for this blessing. My brothers have yet to be joined to this family link, but my faith and prayers will continue and I have asked my daughters to finish this work if it does not happen before I leave this world’s existence...Pondering all this, I am sure God heard my prayers even as a little girl. He knew me as He knows each of us, but many things had to put into place for them to be answered. Our time is not as the Lord's time. I know that the things we see as impediments or trials here, He does not always see in that same context. Most are for us to get to where we need to be. I think that is what I have learned the most. Be patient and know our Father does hear and answer prayers in His time….and remember He has all eternity!

Grade School Years

Grade School Days

Lena Whitmore Elementary School (Moscow, Idaho)

1st- Grade- my teacher was Mrs.Fish. I remember walking down the hill, then turning left to go to school. This was the only year I went to school in Moscow. It was a nice newer brick school that is still there. It had less vegetation in the 1960s and seemed bigger.

Harrison Elementary School (Twin Falls, Idaho)

2nd Grade - Mrs. Pay, an older graying-blonde woman was our teacher. I had just moved to Twin Falls. My neighbor across the street Rusty was in my class and wet his pants while sitting at his desk and it dripped onto the floor and made a big puddle underneath. The kids in my class were mean and chased a girl named Sharon Knight.  She had kind of ragged clothes, uncombed hair and was sort of dirty. They said she had fleas. They would touch her and then chase you and if they touched you you had fleas. I feel sad and awful remembering it. Since I seem to recall disturbing things, I must have known this was cruel. I do not remember doing it, I tried to be nice to her, but I did not stop it either. I don’t remember any specific friends of my own. I payed a lot with my brothers at home.

2nd grade

3rd Grade- My teacher Mrs. Erikson was not very tall with stiffly sprayed, big-bunned, jet- black hair and black horn-rimmed glasses. My main memory was when a boy in my class named Ricky Adams went back to look in the sink at another boy’s throw-up or vomit and threw-up on top of it. I also became friends with the librarian Mrs. Depew who introduced me to chapter books. I left her a card over the holidays in her desk, but she died and never returned. Later in High School her husband Mr. Depew was a teacher there and he knew I had been her friend. Must have found the card….

3rd grade

4th Grade - Miss Tanner was a new, cute, young teacher dating another teacher in the school.  She would try to get our attention by standing on her desk. My friends were Jay Dodds, the Harshburger twins Gay and Joy…(Gay was more my friend) and I had a crush on a very shy, totally white-headed boy with white eyelashes named Dan Massey (I think) who lived across from the school.

4th grade with cold sores

5th Grade -Mrs. Von Gørtler was a very stiff, fancy dressed and highly make-upped teacher who gave my my only B in grade school. I received it in penmanship! I had most of the same friends from the year before. I was not really shy, but not super social, pretty studious. We played a fun game of kick ball around the baseball bases at recess sometimes and some boy/girl games, but mostly sat and visited under the extremely small trees. I liked being at home and reading.

5th grade

6th Grade- My teacher Mrs. Mitchell was older, small with short brown hair and very well organized. I liked her class. She had a merit system where we got points each day for good things we did and lost them for things we should not be doing. I got the trophy at the end of the year for "Most Merits” and also one for a math award. She probably was not as old as I remember, but I respected her and still remember the house she lived in. 

6th grade

I really liked school. I was excited for fall and the start of the school year, but also loved summers. However, I never had birthday parties really since my birthday was in the summer and it was not as easy to contact people as it is today.

During this time I lived at 1223 Lawndale Drive in Twin Falls off of North Blue Lakes Blvd. There was a large Church-owned field behind our house and behind the houses across the street was the Holiday Inn Golf Course where my brothers and I would play golf sometimes. We would walk to the Blue Lakes Sporting Goods Store to buy candy on quite a busy road all by ourselves. We built a tree house in a big tree up on Blue Lakes Blvd. and played in the field behind our house. (Once my brothers accidentally burned down a haystack there when they lit a match to see in the tunnels they created in it. The firemen thought they had burned in the fire, but they were hiding under their beds). We would play games of Capture the Flag with the neighborhood kids in the evenings.  I was a fast runner. My brother Jason Andrew was born while we lived there on February 17th, 1967. He slept in my room for 2 years and I would sing him to sleep. I remember when I would go to bed being afraid a fire would start during the night that would burn down the house and concerned burglars would come in my window, but mostly of fires. We had boy babysitters until one day when I told my parents how Chuck who lived across the street used to rub my back when I was going to bed in my nightgown and stand me up on the bed and say he wished I was this tall. Looking back I see how inappropriate that was and see why my parents were concerned. Soon I babysat my brothers a lot. They were busy and crazy and pole vaulted onto a mattress in our front yard. I remember one time tying Jason to the tree while babysitting. I even performed a marriage ceremony for my brother Chris to a neighbor Kim Bybee one year in the back yard behind the fence. Living life in the 1960’s was more hands-on living than the cyber world of today. I had a good childhood and cannot believe I remember all my teacher’s names! Perhaps because they opened my young mind. I love teachers and teaching!

Quote from a biographical paper I wrote during grade school called "My Life in Brief": "So now my life sisterless, brother tormented, is kept happy with school, church, piano, 4-H, and growing up to help make a better world"

Preschool or Early Years

Preschool or Early years

My early years before starting school were split living back and forth in both Moscow and Buhl, Idaho, then Moscow again. Upon college graduation my parents moved me and my brother Christopher Lee (born on Christopher Columbus Day, October 12th, 1960 when I was just 15 months old) to Buhl,  where my dad worked for a few years at the Jr. High teaching history and coaching basketball. We returned to the U of I in Moscow for my dad to complete a Master’s Degree (he has degrees in Business, in School Administration and in Counseling) and my brother Steven David was born (September 26th,1963) there in Moscow too. We lived in many different Moscow homes. I remember 1) the apartment complex with many buildings and children living there called Blaine Manor, 2) a home on the west side nearer the university and the butcher shop in Johnny’s Market (pictured) where my Grandpa Marv had worked. It had a basement with only a paneled playroom finished and 3) our nicest home that I remember in Moscow was a white single story next door to the Goetz family who had 4 athletic sons on sloping 6th Street north of the City Park on the east side of town. I remember the neighbor’s worn grass and a pole-vault pit, basketball hoop and other sports equipment and having to go through 1 bedroom to get to another in our house.

Johnny's Market where Gpa Marv worked.

I had two imaginary friends that kept me company wherever we lived during those pre-school years. Sixey and Goggy ate with me, slept with me and took blame for any mischief. They were my constant companions and I had to forever tell my parents where to sit to not squash them. Not sure what made them go away...

Story my mom shared: My first movie proved to be my first "showing". It was very hot at the movie and I was too young to enjoy it, so I decided to make myself more comfortable piece by piece. Pretty soon I ran out of pieces and felt much better so I took a little stroll down the aisle to the center front where more eyes were on me than the movie and my parents wouldn't claim me.

Other clear memories of events during those early years:

*Walking home from Kindergarten and my umbrella blowing inside-out in the wind. 

*Telling my mom, by accident, what her Mother’s Day present was and hiding under my parents bed in embarrassment where I found a roll of lifesavers between the bed frame and the mattress. 

*Being cast as the lead girl in the Kindergarten play about a visit to the zoo, but at the last minute being switched for some unknown reason to be a hyena instead and not even getting to hold my hyena picture which was much better than the one I was assigned to hold. I was wearing a pretty pink dress my Grandma Helen gave me and family members had come to watch, so disappointing.

*Being so upset about how my cousin Tom was feeding my brother Steve while babysitting. He was watching TV and letting the milk go all over Steve's face, so I tipped over the rocker, took Steve away and locked us in the bathroom where I could feed him until my parents got home.

*Going along with peer pressure to feed Chris a bug.

*On Sunday nights getting to watch Johnny Quest at the Tunnicliff’s house on a color TV. Our television was black and white.

*Getting a dog, a collie, when we lived in Buhl. Other dogs growing up were, Missy a Chiguagua mix that had many pups, Mr. French one of the pups we gave to my Grandma Helen, Sir Champion a Wire-hair Griffin and Zonkers a mangy mongrel abused dog given to me by a child who came to do activities while I was working at the park.

*Living in Moscow and getting to see grandparents. 1) Saw the Crosslers the most. They lived in a big 3 story house on a hill with a 3 tiered backyard and a view. The Hardings lived in an old wooden house with a big porch and a stove that stilled used wood to cook food. 3) The Meyerhoeffer’s house was across from a small park and seemed very formal, but welcoming. We went there least.

Below are some photos I found in a biographical story I wrote in grade school:

Chris and I with cousins (Gpa Art's daughter Patty's children)

Birth

Teresa Meyerhoeffer Christensen (1959-) 

I have written this history once before when in my 40’s, but have searched computer memories to no avail, so it is floating around somewhere in cyberspace and I must dig in my departing memory and consult old journals to try to capture the things I do remember before even more is washed away with time…

Birth

I was born in Moscow, Idaho on July 10, 1959, a Friday I believe… “Friday’s child is loving and giving”, to Gerald Robert Meyerhoeffer (January 4, 1938) and Erma Pauline Harding Meyerhoeffer (December 6, 1939). They met attending Moscow High School where my father was a star basketball player and my mother a cheerleader, but both dated other people. They have not shared much of their mysterious courtship. I know it was a bit tumultuous and not really sure how they ended up getting married on December 30, 1958. I do know neither of their parents were very happy about the union. My father’s family had more wealth (his mother Helen Pearl Franklin Meyerhoeffer Crossler having remarried Arthur Elbert Crossler who owned the Idaho Hotel in town where I remember riding the elevator and eating at the smorgasbord) and my mother’s family was more religious in the LDS faith. Her father Benjamin Williams Harding reportedly pulled the phone out of the wall (yes, phones used to be corded into the walls) when he heard. I am not sure how my Grandpa Marvin Lewis Meyerhoeffer took the news. He was a butcher in town who had remarried a sweet spinster Ada May Sailor after his divorce. My father graduated from high school in 1956 and was playing college basketball at the University of Idaho. My mother graduated in 1958 and was attending college there as well. Upon my impending arrival my father due to necessity sought employment as a bar tender and later in a men’s clothing store. I think that ended his basketball career, but he continued to love the game and coached much and watches much to this day.  

I arrived around midday, a darling baby girl with a cap of short dark hair and dark eyes, weighing in at 6 pounds 15 ounces at the Gritman Memorial Hospital in Moscow. My 19 year old mother delivered a healthy, strong baby girl and my father brought me a stuffed animal. I went home to the Hotel following my birth for my mom to recuperate . The Hotel is no longer standing, torn down for a road to go through it’s space, but that was my first domicile. The Hospital is still there however, now called Gritman Medical Center (below).