They Brought Each Other Back to Jesus Christ

Don Reed spent decades asking questions nobody wanted to hear. In seminary for the Catholic Church he was told certain questions were not appropriate. He walked away. He kept searching. He went into the Navy, studied criminal justice, watched the Catholic priests at two family funerals show up unprepared and intoxicated, and quietly concluded that the institution was fallible even if his faith was not.

His spirituality was never the problem. His questions were.

In this episode of Choosing Jesus Christ, Sister Hawker sits down with Don Reed, a Navy veteran and recent convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to hear how a woman coming back to her faith, a temple open house in Casper, Wyoming, and a church that welcomed every question brought him home.

Questions Nobody Would Answer

Don grew up Catholic. He took it seriously. He enrolled in seminary, not to become a priest, but because he genuinely wanted to understand. When he started asking about other religious texts from the same historical period, he was told those questions were not appropriate. When he pushed on doctrinal issues, he got the same response.

He walked away. Not from God. Never from God. He walked away from the institution that kept shutting the door on his curiosity.

He joined the Navy out of high school. He kept his Bible study going as best he could on a 500-person ship where Catholics were a minority of four. He heard the Holy Spirit during those years, he says, just not as clearly as he does now. The military gave him a foundation for who he was. It taught him that leadership is fallible, that grace matters, and that the right path is something you choose every day with your agency.

When he got out, he started college on the GI Bill, considered criminal justice, sat in on seminary classes one more time, and got the same answers as before. He chose criminal justice instead. He spent the next 20 years with his faith intact and no church to put it in.

She Brought Each Other Back

Don met his future wife when she was going through a divorce and a crisis of faith. She had been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had drifted away. He saw where she was and told her directly: there is nobody on this earth who has not gone through a crisis of faith. Find them if you think they exist. And then he encouraged her to go back.

He did not plan on joining himself. He just wanted to support her. But as he watched her change, he wanted to understand what was causing it. He started attending with her. He started listening.

Then her family took them to the temple open house in Casper, Wyoming. Walking through the building, Don felt something he describes as an insistence. Not a suggestion. A firm, quiet knowing: this is where you belong. His future father-in-law walked alongside him and answered his questions. The Holy Spirit, Don says, was simply saying: this is where you need to be.

By the time the missionaries sat down with him, most of the work was already done. They told him he was one of the easiest people they had ever taught. He told them: if I am going to commit to something, I am doing it with 100 percent.

A Church That Welcomes the Questions

Don was baptized on June 22nd of the previous year, after relocating from Wyoming to Idaho Falls and after making the life adjustments needed to be ready. The baptism itself was different from anything he had experienced in the Catholic Church. Total immersion in a warm font. He felt the Holy Spirit more clearly than he ever had. Not louder, just cleaner. More certain.

He came in with a scholar's background and found a church that matched it. He talks about the Book of Mormon the way a researcher talks about a primary source: it is written in a more current form than the King James Bible, the ideas are accessible, and it helps illuminate the Bible rather than replace it. He was already familiar with the Apocrypha, the collection of gospels that did not make it into the King James version. When he discovered that Joseph Smith referenced those same texts during the translation process, without having known about them, it sealed something for him.

A church that says bring your questions, look at every source, pray for discernment, and then do the work to understand what the Spirit is telling you was exactly what Don had been looking for since he was turned away from a seminary classroom decades ago.

He and his wife are now both ward missionaries. He was called almost immediately after his baptism. He says when your faith is the foundation, the calling is not a burden. It is the next natural step.

Key Takeaways

1. A church that welcomes every question is not a weak church. It is a confident one. Don spent decades being told not to ask. He found a church that said ask everything.

2. God often works through the person closest to you. Don encouraged his future wife to return to her faith before he ever considered joining himself. Her transformation was his invitation.

3. The Holy Ghost speaks before baptism. Don heard the Spirit at the temple open house in Casper. The ordinance of baptism made that voice clearer, not louder.

4. Both the Bible and the Book of Mormon are meant to work together. Don came in with deep biblical knowledge and found the Book of Mormon opened the Bible rather than closed it.

5. Preparation matters as much as spiritual experience. Don says discernment does not come to those who wait passively. You study, you prepare, and then you listen.

Don's story is one of a man who never stopped believing. He just needed a place where belief and questions could exist in the same room. Listen to this episode of the Choosing Jesus Christ Podcast to hear him share it in his own words. And if you have questions you have been carrying for years, visit ChoosingJesusChrist.org. Our missionaries are ready for them.