The journey began several years ago. My family goes on vacation to California every summer. A few years ago we camped for a week in OC. My wife and I lived there previously for a few years and decided to go a little early to have a little fun with the kids before we hooked up with the rest of the family. We arrived on Friday and went to church one Sunday. We soon heard that the Newport Beach Temple open house was currently “open”.

We visited the open house and enjoyed it immensely. I was impressed by the temple and liked the architecture. While riding the bus from the temple back to the parking lot, I noticed a protester holding a sign. The sign read “JosephLied.com“. I paid no attention to it, but the website was so easy to remember that I decided to check it out weeks later. I can’t remember exactly what happened next, but I do remember noticing something about there being three versions of the First Vision.

Having been born and raised in a very Mormon family, I had never heard about there being more than one version of the single most important event since the first coming. It intrigued me. I decided to do find the three versions to see if there was more I needed to know about it. Possibly there were more details I could learn that would strengthen my testimony. Instead of adding to my testimony, all it provided were questions. The main question I had was “Why are the three versions so different, even contradictory?”

I didn’t delve into it then. I left it in the back of my mind and went on with life. Since that time, the summer of 2005 I believe, I have slowly discovered more and more information about the history of the church that continues to bother me, confuse me, irritate me, enrage me, and ultimately distance me from my former beliefs.