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I’m Tom Haws. I am from Mesa, Arizona and I live in Gilbert, Arizona. My family includes the Shumways, Coopers, Clevengers, Princes, Hatches, Brimhalls, and Smiths. I served a mission in southern Mexico 1985-1987 and graduated from BYU in civil engineering in 1991. My parents, grandparents, dear wife of 17 years, and three dear children are all faithful Latter-day Saints. And I am LDS too. My “first conversion” happened at age 15. My “second conversion” happened on October 23, 2003 at age 37.
I believe in Heaven and in God, who is Love, the Greatest of All.
I believe in the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount.
I believe that every person on earth should be married one or zero times, period.
I believe in revelation, prophecy, and seership today to and through all 6 billion children of God. I hope I love, delight in, and learn from atheists, Muslims, Jews, Baptists, and Catholics.
I have a testimony of peace, non-aggression, non-violence, and non-resistance.
I aspire to be fully sharing, non-grasping, and non-possessive.
I believe in being reverent and in avoiding oaths, promises, and covenants.
I hope that I can do a good job of staying LDS.
Tom Haws
Welcome Tom, I share many of your ideals at the purest form of their intent. It sounds like your “Second Conversion” gave you a nice lense of love and acceptance to see the world. There is a lot of beauty out there. I share a lot of your ideals and look forward to hearing more from you. Thanks for introducing yourself. Welcome, Tom. I think you will be a great fit here. What was your “second conversion,” Tom? Thank you all for your kind welcomes. Tom
Hi, Curt. You asked a hard question, I think. My second conversion developed in my mid thirties as I pondered my own limitations and the limitations of my faith more seriously and found, one by one, through media, dreams, pondering, and prayer, hard answers. One month and four days after my thirty-seventh birthday, the culminating moment of my second conversion came on a Monday night as I read dozens of testimonies of the afterlife at
http://www.near-death.comThat moment rearranged my priorities permanently. Six billion brothers and sisters, living angels, came alive before my face. Love became the All, the Source, the name of my Father. The position of the boundary of Agency in its most inconceivably absolute form became clear. I became a mystic, and newly compelled to believe the Sermon on the Mount in an entirely more life-guiding way.
That was on October 20, 2003. I suppose the rest of my life I will be framing and building on that and moving toward whatever comes next. The first years afterward were marked by a lot of reading and searching to know I was not alone, and to discover how to live a real life in my new reality. I have made some terrible mistakes in my marriage, and I am still a terrible ambassador for heaven. Life isn’t easier, but my heart is more at peace, and the world makes more sense now than ever.
I feel that Staying LDS is part of what I will do if I am true to the highest of what I have experienced and known. The hard thing is that I don’t have any idea how I will successfully make that happen.
Hopefully humbly,
Tom
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