Discovering Her Message
Jane’s book tour took them next to Little Rock, Arkansas, where they found another LDS congregation to join that Sunday, thinking no one would notice them. But with Richard wearing a red jogging suit and Jane wearing casual clothes, it took only seconds after the final “Amen” for someone to introduce themselves and ask if they were visitors.
“Yes, I am, and we want to be baptized today,” Jane told the friendly ward member. The woman quickly introduced Jane and Richard to the missionaries, and Jane remembers the missionaries looking at her with complete love. “I thought I was seeing angels or something,” Jane recalls.
When Jane and Richard told the missionaries they wanted to be baptized, the elders were enthusiastic, but they also told the couple a few steps would need to happen before a baptismal day. First, the missionaries took the couple to Gospel Principles, and Jane was ecstatic to learn they were teaching from the very same book she had just finished. “Everything they were teaching in that class, I already believed,” Jane says.
Jane remembers everyone she met that first day of church being so kind, loving, and full of a light she couldn’t explain—what she calls the Mormon glow. She wanted more than anything to learn how to experience that light for herself.
Her conversion came in stages. First, she learned how to pray. Having been raised Catholic, Jane only knew how to say a handful of memorized prayers, and she remembers the first time she knelt beside her bed and truly began conversing with Heavenly Father. “I just started talking and words started flowing,” Jane says. It was in that moment, in 2013, five years after her near-death experience, that Jane finally understood what message it was her ancestors wanted her to share. The message was that this Church—and all its teachings about eternal families, the Book of Mormon, life after death, our divine potential, angels, and salvation for our relatives—is true.
Jane and Richard got married and baptized shortly after investigating the LDS Church. No sooner had they received the Holy Ghost than they began to work toward receiving their endowment and becoming sealed in the temple.
“For me, becoming LDS is like entering a whole new world—like stake houses that don’t feed steak. . . . We had to practice for weeks to learn how to say Melchizedek,” Jane jokes. “But I have to say, I love it.” And while much of what Jane has learned about the gospel was new, some of it was startlingly familiar.
When the missionaries began teaching Jane about Joseph Smith, she knew in her heart it was true because of a dream she had received years previously, a dream during which a young boy saw God the Father and Jesus Christ. After waking from the dream, Jane told Richard with excitement, “There is a young man who saw God and Jesus Christ, and they appeared to him in New York.” Jane remembers Richard correcting her, “He said, ‘Oh no, I know that story. I have a friend who goes to that church, and he lives in Utah. God and Jesus appeared to Joseph Smith in Utah.” Later, when Jane first received a Book of Mormon and saw Joseph Smith’s name printed inside the front cover, she wondered if it could be the same boy she had dreamed about. Then, when she learned about his experience in the Sacred Grove, she felt an added measure of peace and security that she had found the true Church.
Jane originally was hesitant about sharing her dreams and experiences with Church members after the negative reception she had received in other churches. But, bits at a time, Jane would open up during church classes or with friends in the ward. “They didn’t kick us out,” Jane remembers with amazement. “They didn’t laugh at us; they embraced us.” As Jane learned more about Church history and the visions Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff, and so many other Church leaders had of the spirit world and life hereafter, Jane learned that what she had seen was true and that God still speaks to us today through miraculous means.
Becoming Sealed in the Temple
“We started doing our ancestry work two weeks after our baptism,” Jane remembers. “We had no idea what we were doing, but we knew other people had talked about their ancestry work, and we could feel our ancestors [urging us]. . . . We’ve found hundreds of names.”
While investigating the Church and waiting to receive their endowments, Jane and Richard put their tour and everything on hold, staying in Arkansas.
When they were first issued a limited-use recommend to perform baptisms for the dead for their ancestors, Jane and Richard made the seven-hour drive to the nearest temple, the Memphis Tennessee Temple. “I remember Richard was holding my hand while we walked into the Memphis temple,” Jane says. “Immediately I started crying because I could [sense] angels everywhere.” Jane was baptized first for Richard’s mother, and she says, “I could feel her. There are no words to explain how I felt.” Then, Richard was baptized for his father. The whole seven-hour drive home, the two didn’t talk about their experience. “We were in awe,” Jane says.
But the next morning, Richard asked if they could go back to the temple that weekend. And they did—that weekend and several more following.
In June 2013, Jane and Richard first traveled to Utah, and when Jane saw “churches on every corner and temples everywhere you look,” she knew she wanted to make Utah her home. That same year, Jane and Richard moved everything from their home in California to Provo, Utah, where they still live today. Both Richard and Jane received their endowment and were sealed together in the temple in 2014, a sacred experience Jane says she will never forget. Jane has since had the privilege of working in the temple, serving as a ward missionary, and teaching ancestry classes—all callings that resonate with her own story and passion.
About her journey of joining the Church, Jane says, “I know the Church is true. . . For me to know it now, I’m jumping and shouting from the rooftops telling people that I’m so excited that the Church is true. . . . I try to testify as often as I can.” Because, for Jane, the Church and the gospel are a special message she feels privileged to share.
Learn more about Jane’s incredible story in Visions of Heaven: What My Near-Death Experience Taught Me About Eternity.
For one brief moment, facing death, Jane Moe stepped into eternity. This incredible true story will take you on an enthralling journey as Jane sees God’s plan for families and is taught how to recognize His Church when she encounters it later in life. Take more steps into eternity with Jane and come to know what heaven—and mortality—is really ab
