Born Catholic, Alec Summers joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints just over 9 months ago after searching for religion throughout high school.
Summers, a freshman in general studies from Southern California, said he was baptized as a Catholic when he was a child, and his family only went to church on special occasions like Easter Sunday. He was the one in the family who would pray on his own, and his family looked to him to say the prayer at Christmas, New Year’s or Easter when the family would gather for dinner.
At around 16 years old, Summers said he began looking into various churches. “People would ask what are you. And I would answer, ‘I don’t know’…. I was searching for churches. I wanted to find something to identify myself as.”
Gillian Warren, a freshman from Temecula, Calif., studying art, went to high school with Summers and joined him at BYUH.
“He is so approachable. He makes you feel like you are one of his friends,” said Warren. She said she and Summers had Mormon friends in common.
He went to several mutual activities. One of them was a Joseph Smith Restoration themed mutual activity. Summers said, “During the activity, I was sitting there unsure as to what is going on.” Summers said he was confused about what he was learning. He said, “I left for a bit. My friend confronted me and asked if I didn’t like mutual. I said, ‘I’m just confused as to what I want.’” Summers decided to continue researching the Church.
He said, “It was really confusing at first. I watched General Conference before I ever went to church. Watching conference made me even more confused… I thought, ‘What the heck is happening?’ I went over to my friend’s house and talked with my friend’s Mom about it. They never pressured me at all. It was never something that I felt obligated to do.”
Summers eventually asked his friend, Brayden, if he could go to church with him. He said, “From that moment on, it was an incredible experience. I walked into the church and everyone greets you, everyone asks you what is your name. ... This welcoming experience wasn’t an outsider type of thing. They all wanted to benefit from each other.”
“That was after my first Sunday,” Summers said, “but all I know is that I felt something. I didn’t know until later on that it was the spirit.”
Summers said although it was a great Sunday, “It was rough. ... It was three hours and I had no idea what was going on in sacrament.” Two weeks passed and Summers asked Brayden if he could take the missionary lessons. Brayden responded by sending the sister missionaries.
Summers said he answered the sisters’ questions exactly how they had written them in their journals and lesson plans. “It was weird because I felt like I had answered these questions before. I was sitting there and I thought … I know this stuff. I was being taught it for the first time but I already knew it. It was kind of confusing at the time, but I thought why do I understand this so much?”
Warren said she was able to cross-reference a lot of things from the Book of Mormon to the Bible with him. She said, “He was really humble and open to it. He actually saw that the Book of Mormon reflected all the Christian, Catholic beliefs. It was almost like the Book of Mormon enhanced it.”
As Summers continued to take the lessons and his desire to get baptized grew, he soon found it wouldn’t be smooth sailing. He had life-long friends sit him down and tell him that they were concerned for his salvation and that he would “go to hell” if he continued. He said he was asked about all sorts of topics including polygamy and other hard issues. Many of his friends from childhood stopped talking to him. He was told the only reason he was listening to the missionaries is because of his Mormon friends.
His devout Catholic grandparents expressed concern. Summers said, “It was rough for my grandparents to accept it, because they saw it as me going against them and their culture. They said that by doing this I was going against family and culture and that is really disrespectful for me to do that.”
His mother also complicated things at first. “She wasn’t okay with it at all. She actually came to one of the lessons to see what it was all about and you could tell that she wasn’t feeling it at all. She was skeptical and left after the lesson and I asked her about it. She said, ‘I will talk to you about it tomorrow.’ Tomorrow came and she didn’t talk to me about it. The day after that came and again she didn’t talk to me about it.”
For two weeks, Summers and his mom avoided the topic, talking about everything else but the Church. To break this silence, Summers said he decided to pray to change his mom’s heart. “I remember on a day of a lesson, I prayed before I went to bed and prayed that god would open her heart and uplift her and see what it going on.”
Summers continued, “I prayed that she would see that there was something deeper, that I wanted to do it for myself.” Two days later, his mom sent him a text while he was in class. Summers said it was the most powerful text he has ever received.
The text read, “Alec, I love you and I will always love you and I noticed lately that I haven’t been open minded to the things that you desire. I’m sorry for not taking in consideration your wants and desires. With that I give you permission to get baptized. I love you so much.”
On Jan. 11, 2015, Summers was baptized a member of the Church. Warren sang “I Need Thee Every Hour” at his baptism, which left both Alec and his mom in tears, he said.
“My mom is good about it now. She is excited that I have been able to come [to BYUH],” said Summers.
He shared his mom defended his choice to a coworker, who got upset after seeing photos of his baptism on Facebook. The coworker told her the Church was a cult and she needed to get him out of it immediately.
“Although this coworker was someone who she respected, she went back and told her, ‘I love him and will support him through anything. If it is something that he wants, it is something that I want too.’”
Warren, Summers and nine other fellow high school students from Temecula all have found their way to BYUH. Gillian said, “I don’t think that any one of us alone could have led him to be baptized.” She said the collective influence of all the LDS friends gave him the resources to choose to be baptized.