Should I move to Utah?

This blog is going to be extremely truthful and honest about the freeze we received from Utah and I'm not talking about the below 20 degree weather. 

We uprooted our family and everyone was in shock and thought we were acting on impulse or just woke up one day and said "hey let's move" but the truth is we'd wanted to move out of Fresno since day one, I'm pretty sure it was the root conversation surrounding my husband and I's very first date. Over the years and through each place we moved to we always circled back to moving out of state and after we had our daughter the feeling intensified. We wanted safe, family friendly, room for growth, opportunity and we'd just gone through the rockiest point in our marriage and wanted space from anyone and everyone. My husband found schools he was interested in around salt lake city and we used his birthday to travel there with our little girl and we immediately fell in love with it. I felt like god brought us here 100% and wanted to use us to reach people here. I felt relieved because we'd already traveled all of California and could not afford anywhere there other than Fresno Ca which was where we were trying to escape. We'd also traveled all over Texas but my husband and I were not feeling it. 

So we visited in March and moved here in May, as I said family and friends had a lot of feelings over this understandably. My husband and I had spent the last 6 years researching and dreaming over moving while our family and friends only had 2 months to process through this. Our little Emily was about 22 months old when we moved, and it broke her grandma's hearts. It broke us too but we were comforted knowing this was gods plan. We have gone through some of the hardest times of our lives here and been tested with every ounce of our souls and fought everyday to get back up but I think the hardest part that I was and still am not prepared for is how hard it is to be a christian in Utah. 

We knew moving here that it would be predominantly LDS but holy cow we were not expecting to have sister missionaries knocking on our door day 2 of moving in here. I want to talk about this subject very carefully to not hurt anyone's feelings or start an argument but I also want to write freely which will be very challenging. So here it goes..

I started my journey off here eager to be a disciple of Jesus and to be bold and make friends and not be fearful of judgement or rejection. But here's what happened... Every dog park, kid park, mommy meet up, even the mommy support groups here are saturated with LDS which is no big deal right? Well it becomes a big deal when the 2nd or 3rd question in a conversation is "what ward are you from?" and when I explain to them I'm not LDS I get exiled from the conversation. It's even stickier because Im christian, and in the LDS faith they are taught that they are also christian so as I try to tiptoe around the fact that they are not one in the same the conversation usually dwindles off into a "well have a good day, it was nice chatting" or if we get as far as to exchange phone numbers I usually won't get a response so basically it's impossible to make friends here. It makes sense to me now when converted people I've met have said that they joined the LDS faith because they wanted friends or because they didn't want to feel secluded. So whats my overall take of Utah? It's freaking lonely.

After many many attempts at finding a Christian bible based church we did find one that we like, and it's been great connecting with fellow christians which is what god calls us to do BUT it's not all we are called to do. We aren't suppose to seek friendships with only like-minded people and My husband and I both feel a calling to be disciples of Jesus; at one point we opened our door to all the neighbors in our complex and every Friday I'd clean the house and order pizzas and have cookies and drinks and be so ready and eager to welcome people, but weeks turned into months of no shows. And we eventually stopped trying that. I know that isn't what jesus would do but holy cow it's hard to keep trying. 

It's a cycle honestly, we invite LDS members into our home or out for play dates and just try to build a friendship but it always circles back to an invite on their part "hey come to our church's event, it's just across the street" and I can say "thank you so much for inviting but I'm not interested" and then I wont hear from them again until the next church event rolls around and they want to invite us so they run outside while I'm walking my dog and they act like they were on their way out, and just bumped into me. They strike up a conversation and are so friendly but it always leads back to "hey sister Bautista, come to my church". And you see I want to invite neighbors and people in my community to church too and I have in the past but it ends in the same awkward conversation walk away. 

It stinks, because you want to build a genuine friendship with someone before you invite them BUT unless you accept their faith and church invites you are never going to be a friend to them or a part of their circle. That may really tick people off but this is my personal experience here in Utah. So there's that cycle. 

So, should I move to Utah? Should "I" move to Utah!? My personal answer to that is no. Not unless you're 100% ready to defend your faith and beliefs, to get the cold shoulder when you do or unless you're already LDS or ready to convert. 

I've heard horror stories of children growing up here non-LDS and being left out of everything including things like sports, birthday parties or sleep overs. As parents; I'm not sure we are prepared for that, my children will be raised as bold, jesus loving christians and the kids in our church share openly about their faith; as young as first grade you will see or hear of kids arguing over the truth of Jesus which is AMAZING but a christian child will always be the odd man out in a classroom and ganged up on and eventually shunned or left out for it. It's absolutely heartbreaking. Kids in our church have been totally accepted by LDS families but then shunned within a few months if they do not get baptized or start attending the Sunday Service in their church.

 Is that what Jesus would do? I personally have invited kids and families over or even offered to babysit neighbor's kids and because I'm not LDS I'm turned away. 

It brings me to this question...if LDS is "considered christian" then why cant our christian children play with your LDS children? Why can't we have a genuine friendship aside from the invites to church? 

We've been here now for 1.5 years but we are feeling the need to move again.