My LDS friend read your testimony and claims it's not really you writing it. He says it's "them" (whoever "they" are), with an agenda.

I don't know what evidence it would take to convince your friend that I really wrote my testimony myself and am an authentic individual. If I signed an affidavit, sent a picture of my family and myself, gave you phone numbers of Mormons who know me, or the name and number of the bishop of the ward I was in when I left the Church, it would not make a difference. No matter what evidence is provided, if someone does not want to believe it they will find a way to deny it is real.

With that said, I tell you with all integrity and honesty of heart that I am a real individual with a genuine story. I wrote the account of my experiences with Mormonism myself. Unless your friend hires a private detective or investigative researcher, he will need to determine the truth of a matter by the evidence available and not focus on the things that are hard to confirm. For example, did Tracy really ask Donny Osmond for a date? Is she really who she says she is or is she really a fat, bald, 60-year-old male conspirator pretending to be a woman, involved in a worldwide plot to trick unsuspecting Mormons into leaving the Church? In answer to those questions, yes I really asked Donny for a date. Had I been a fat, bald, 60-year old conspiring man I don't think Donny would have been interested in dancing with me. No, I am not pretending to be someone else, and no, I have nothing against fat bald men. Those are the kinds of things that are hard to prove without eye-witness testimony or documentation.

Have your friend focus instead on the things that can be backed up with evidence. For example, did Joseph Smith actually take married women as wives? You can log on to the official LDS Church website, click on "Family History," then "Pedigree Resource File," put in Joseph Smith's name and parents' names. Put in that you are looking for marriages (1834, PLUS or MINUS 10 years) and a list of all of Joseph's marriages comes up. If you then look up the marriage histories of Smith's wives, you will find that several of them were already married to living husbands at the time of their weddings to the Mormon prophet.

Your friend can check the Journal of Discourses himself and see with his own eyes that Brigham Young and others taught that Adam is our god. He can also see with his own eyes the introduction to the volumes of the Journal of Discourses where it says the sermons were various conference talks by LDS prophets and apostles and were to be regarded as coming with authority from God. One can go to Deseret Book and thumb through "Joseph Smith Begins His Work," volumes 1 & 2, and see that the "Lectures on Faith" were part of the canon of LDS scripture. "Lecture Fifth" states that God the Father is Spirit and does not have a body of flesh and bone. In 1921 the Lectures on Faith was removed from the Doctrine & Covenants. Maybe it was removed because it contradicted Smith's later teachings that God has a body of flesh and bone.

With a little digging one can find that for the first 50-plus years the Church taught that the angel NEPHI appeared to Smith with the gold plates and that it was later changed to MORONI. If your friend really wants to know the truth, all the evidence is available. But if he does not care about truth, all the evidence in the world will not convince him. There is actually a group of people that belong to the "Flat Earth Society" and they refuse to believe that the earth is a sphere. Many people are less concerned about facts than they are about preserving their own beliefs at all costs.

Again, I don't know what would convince your friend that I am not a part of a mysterious “THEM" with an agenda, but he should examine the message rather than attack the messenger. My only goals are to expose error, speak biblical truth, and invite people to learn about Jesus of the Bible. It's up to individuals to decide for themselves what to do with the information.

Warm regards,

Tracy