Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Mormons Aren't Exempt from Adversity


Alex Boye's mother sent him to a boarding school north of London when he was 11 years old and told him she'd visit in three weeks. Instead, she moved to Nigeria and stayed for eight years. He never stopped looking for her on Parents Day.

Boye thought the sad, lonely feelings that peppered his adolescence were gone for good when at his baptism into the Mormon faith about five years later, he felt joy and happiness like he'd never known.


But within days he felt abandoned yet again, this time by his God, when he was kicked out of his uncle's house in London, where he stayed during summer vacation, just one week after joining the church.

"A week after I joined the church, I was homeless," Boye said. With all those good feeling replaced by bad ones, he said he thought "'What have I done? Life is worse,'" that first night in 1986 when he slept in an abandoned, white van.

(For the full story, click here)