Harley Berg, the owner of a used-car dealership, came home and told his wife, Gloria, “We have a new salesperson. John and his wife, Trisha, attend the Mormon church.”

“As the owners, we try not to mix our religion with the job,” says Gloria. “[John] was our employee, and we didn’t want to make him uncomfortable.” But they couldn’t remain completely silent about the church—Messiah, Nampa, Idaho—where they have been members for four years.

“We love our church because it teaches the truth of Scripture. There’s a love for people that makes us family, they have a ministry to Mormons, and they don’t judge people,” says Gloria. Though she and Harley didn’t attend church for the first 12 years of their marriage, now that they’ve joined Messiah, she says, “You can’t help but talk about our church.”

So when Harley came home one day and said, “They are not going to the Mormon church anymore,” Gloria said, “Oh really . . .” and knew that the time was right to invite them. “The next time I saw John,” says Gloria, “he started laughing and said, ‘I know what you’re going to do.’ ”

She invited them to visit Messiah and told John that the pastor and congregation reach out to those who have been members of the Latter Day Saints (LDS) church through Truth in Love Ministry (TILM).

The right time

That invitation came right as John and Trisha were wondering what to do about church. John had been raised Baptist, and he and 13-year-old Alissia had been baptized as Christians. However, at Trisha’s request they started attending the LDS church and were baptized into that church three years ago.

Trisha had been raised LDS, but “my whole life I was off and on about the LDS church,” she says. “I didn’t know if it was true or not. I was never taught about the Bible or Jesus, just rules and laws that we had to follow to get to heaven. It didn’t make sense.”

They spent about three months of their marriage attending the LDS church. Then they simply stopped going to any church for a year and a half. “Life was confusing,” says Trisha. “John and I both realized it wasn’t the church we wanted to go to or have our kids raised in. The whole church was too sketchy. John knew that the whole time, but he only went to make me happy.”

So over the past year they discussed if they wanted to go to church and, if they did, which one. Gloria’s enthusiasm about Messiah led John and Trisha to accept the invitation. Gloria, however, doesn’t take the credit for it. “All we did was invite them,” she says. “It was God’s timing.”