Going into our spiritual immersion trip to Utah, I was concerned that my faith would be shaken and that I would not be able to answer the questions the LDS members would present to me, but I could not have been more wrong. Was I able to give a perfect answer to every question asked?
No, but I did return with a greater confidence that, as Christians, we stand on truth.
A big part of the confidence I came back with was thanks to Brett Kunkle and the Maven staff. They did a great job preparing the Fellows before the trip, as well as answering any questions we had after our conversations with the LDS members. We had multiple conversations with LDS members in a variety of different environments. We went to Temple Square in Salt Lake City, where we got to ask questions of missionaries and temple workers to get a better understanding of what they believe. We walked around BYU’s campus, having discussions with the students and getting to give some pushback in a respectful way. We even got to have an open discussion with three BYU professors and LDS scholars.
In all of these discussions, when we would ask hard questions about deep theological issues, such as who Jesus claimed to be or what our final authority should be, many LDS members could not give a sound argument, but we were able to answer these questions with Scripture and logic. It was amazing to see the way God worked, not just in the lives of the LDS members we had discussions with, but within ourselves as well.
Each night we would come back and debrief with our groups, and hearing the stories and reflections on our days was so powerful because we just got to see over and over again that God is on the move and that Jesus is the truth.
Jacob Detweiler, Class of 2027
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