Looking back from the other side

This weekend was General Conference for Mormons.  While they gathered at the Conference Center in Salt Lake or around their TVs and PCs, I spent part of Saturday in my new church helping do some detail cleaning that the paid weekly cleaners don't do. I pondered how my views have changed so much this year. 

I looked at a photo of a wealthy woman from the 1800s who put her money into building the church I was cleaning.  I remember seeing her photo when I first visited the church around Christmastime last year.  My LDS visiting teaching companion and I went to see the Nativity scenes on display inside and to show support for the woman we visit-taught, who attended the church and even worked there. 

I chuckle now at my viewpoint then.  I wondered why was the woman we visited attending this church? Surely any Christian church was just a poor mockery of the true gospel of Christ.  Was she perhaps offended by someone in our LDS ward? And then this woman in history, why would she fight against the tide so much that she spent her money building the church?

But on this past Saturday, I thought to myself: Thank God that I visit-taught this woman who introduced me to this happy, welcoming church. And I tipped my baseball hat to the woman in the black and white photo for making this building possible.

I can hardly believe that I was so sure of myself back in the LDS days. I spent so much time judging everything else to be less-than and didn't even recognize it.