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Answering this question is as easy for me as answering my own name. I'm a convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was baptized the summer after I graduated from high school in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'd made some new friends who were latter-day saints and I could tell something was different about them. After a few invitations from them, I agreed to take the missionary discussions. I would meet with the missionaries, they would leave me pamphlets and marked scriptures in the Book of Mormon to read. Each week they would come back and eagerly ask me, "Did you read? Did you pray?" I'd mumble some kind of an excuse why I hadn't and they would continue to encourage me. One night, the night before my next meeting with the missionaries, I remember thinking, "This is important enough. I need to find out if what they are teaching me is true." So I knelt and asked a very straightforward, direct question to God, "Did You and Your Son really appear to Joseph Smith?" The Spirit flooded my entire being. I had never felt anything like it before. It lasted for a long time. I wept. I had really received an answer, just like the promise contained in the Book of Mormon teaches. I'm grateful to those friends who introduced me to the gospel (one of them baptized me that summer), but I'm more grateful, eternally grateful, to my Heavenly Father for sending the Spirit to testify to me in such a powerful way. So many people gain their testimony over years of their lives. My testimony has grown tremendously since that night, but I consider myself very blessed to be able to point to a single instance when I learned the truthfulness of the Fist Vision. From there, every other principle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ fit together for me. It's true. It's all true. The First Vision happened just the way Joseph said it did. 

One time was when some of my family were able to go to "The Grove". A young missionary girl was there singing the song, "Whom Shall I Serve?" The words that followed this were, "Young Joseph when he was on his knees, found out His Father in Heaven cared." That was a sacred and memorable time that has remained with me now many years later. 

June 1951: On my way to the mission by train and then on the boat "Queen Mary" I read the Book of Mormon. I remember praying in my room on the boat if the book was true. The answer came as strong as I have ever felt anything. A warm feeling came over me like sinking down into a tub of very warm water, then an inner voice said, "it is true". Even now I get that same feeling when I read that book. It is true and Joseph Smith was and is a prophet of God.  Many Christian religious scholars through the centuries have tried to explain their religious beliefs by trying to write them down in an authoritarian way; or to try and write like the Scriptures so people would follow them. None, however, reached that status but instead their writings have become just another book with an opinion of belief with their name as the author. The Book of Mormon stands alone in claiming to be a new book of Christian Scripture, written by prophets who had the authority of God. It carries with it a voice “that has a familiar spirit” (Isaiah 29:4) and on almost every page it testifies that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Redeemer of the world. It is the most perfect book ever written. The promise is to all as an invitation from the prophet Moroni 10:3-5.  Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.  And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true, and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.  And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.  I read this book for the first time on the Queen Mary on my way to serve a 2-year mission in the British Mission in June of 1951. I realized that if I was to teach the people of England that this book was true, I had better find out for myself. I read that book in 3 days and as I was praying for a witness a wonderful thing happened.  I have often tried to express these feelings in writing but then I found an account written by Clayton Christensen that expressed my feelings exactly as I remembered them. His account is as follows:  “I decided that I would commit every evening from 11 to 12 o’clock to reading the Book of Mormon to find out if it was true. I wondered if I dared spend that much time, because I was in a very demanding academic program, studying applied econometrics, and I was going to try to finish the program in two years, whereas most of the people in the program finished it in three, and I just didn’t know if I could afford allocating an hour a day to this effort. But nonetheless I did, and I began at 11:00 by kneeling in prayer by the chair by that heater, and I prayed out loud. I told God how desperate I was to find out if this was a true book, and I told Him that if He would reveal to me that it was true, that I then intended to dedicate my life to building this kingdom. And I told Him if it wasn’t true that I needed to know that for certain, too, because then I would dedicate my life to finding out what was true. Then I would sit in the chair, and I read the first page of the Book of Mormon, and when I got down to the bottom of the page, I stopped, and I thought about what I had read on that page, and I asked myself, “Could this have been written by a Charlatan who was trying to deceive people, or was this really written by a prophet of God? And what did it mean for me in my life?” And then I put the book down and knelt in prayer and verbally asked God again, “Please tell me if this is a true book.” Then I would sit in the chair and pick up the book and turn the page and read another page, pause at the bottom, and do the same thing. I did this for an hour every night, night after night in that cold, damp room, at the Queen’s College Oxford.  By the time I got to the chapters at the end of 2nd Nephi, one evening when I said my prayer and sat in my chair and opened the book, all of a sudden there came into that room a beautiful, warm, loving spirit that just surrounded me and permeated my soul, and enveloped me in a feeling of love that I just had not imagined I could feel. And I began to cry, and I didn’t want to stop crying because as I looked through my tears at the words in the Book of Mormon, I could see truth in those words that I never imagined I could comprehend before. And I could see the glories of eternity and I could see what God had in store for me as one of His sons. And I didn’t want to stop crying. That spirit stayed with me the whole hour, and then every evening as I prayed and sat with the Book of Mormon by the fireplace in my room, that same spirit returned and it changed my heart and my life forever.”  This happens over and over again throughout the world; our missionaries, now ever so young, realize that they are not out there to just ‘tell’ people ‘about’ their Church but to have them gain their own experience of feeling that sure calm energy that lights a fire within them that it is true. 

I joined the church almost 50 years ago. I don't remember a miraculous event that culminated in my knowledge that Joseph Smith's experience in the Sacred Grove was true. From the moment I became active in the church I had no doubt of the truthfulness of this gospel or that Joseph Smith had indeed seen our Father in Heaven and his son Jesus Christ in that Sacred Grove. I had the privilege of being part of the cast in a stake play in Delaware . The play was called From Cumorah's Hill. As we sang the music from that play a feeling of such joy came over me. Every time I hear the song "From Cumorah's Hill" my heart overflows with such intense joy. I know that this young boy Prophet, Joseph Smith, did indeed experience this most holy and sacred event . 

I must have told the Joseph Smith story hundreds of times on my mission. I felt the spirit virtually every time. In my moments of weakness, I remember those times, and am buoyed up. 

I was at a party contemplating what I had read before becoming a member. Read about the story of building the Salt Lake Temple and The Articles of Faith. If I remember right I had started living the Word of Wisdom. Walked to the Church next day and someone was raking leaves. I walked up to him and said "I think I want to be baptized." 

Even though I grew up singing songs about the first vision and Joseph Smith and the restoration of God ‘s Church I don’t think I really felt the truth until I started teaching it to others. I first taught it in Primary and then as a missionary and finally as a Mother. 

I was teaching primary. 

After completing President Hinckley's challenge to read The Book of Mormon I knelt in my room to pray to ask if it was true. After asking if it was true an overwhelming feeling of joy and love swept over me. I almost leaped to my feet. That's when I gained my testimony. 

 I was about 15. As I left my MIA class I thought about the first vision, a strong feeling came over me. It is true it is all true. Light filled my whole being.