I was baptized a Mormon on my eighth birthday.
The reason, oddly enough, involved a bottle of whiskey, a lonely man in Salt Lake City, and several thousand vomiting seagulls.
My mother and father had been searching for the right church for me to attend.
Finally they found the perfect place to send me on Sundays … and later, halfway around the world.
My conversion began when my father, Jack Summers, drove 1,500 miles from Canada to Lake Andes, South Dakota, to pick up my mother and me after our annual summer visit with my grandparents.
On the way back north, Dad stopped in Salt Lake City.
He was lonely and finished off a bottle of whiskey in a motel room near Temple Square
— the spiritual center of the Mormon church, officially known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Don’t forget the hyphen after Latter.)
I had overheard my parents discussing the need to find a religion that might provide their seven-year-old son with some sort of moral compass.
Apparently they feared I was drifting toward a life of crime and depravity.
That evening, slightly tipsy, Dad wandered toward Temple Square.
It was a glorious night with a cool desert breeze, the kind that makes a man feel briefly at peace with the world.
Hundreds of visitors were gathered there listening to fascinating stories told by well-dressed Mormon elders.
Dad arrived just in time to hear about the Miracle of the Seagulls.
A young elder in a dark suit and tie explained that in 1848, when 4,000 Mormon pioneers had been in the Salt Lake Valley for only a few years, hordes of insects suddenly devoured their crops.
The settlers called them Mormon Crickets.
In truth they weren’t crickets at all but members of the katydid family.
They couldn’t fly, but they could certainly eat.
Nothing stopped them.
Millions of them.
Wave after wave.
You could not drown them.
You could not burn them.
You could not poison them.
You could not stomp them to death.
Without their crops, the pioneers would starve during the coming winter.
It looked like curtains for the early Mormons.
Fortunately they had a powerful last resort.
The 4,000 settlers fell to their knees and prayed to Heavenly Father for help.
Moments later, California seagulls arrived in such numbers that they blotted out the sun.
They devoured the Mormon crickets, then flew to nearby ponds, drank water, regurgitated the insects, and returned to eat more.
God had answered the prayers of the Saints.
The crops were saved.
The pioneers would live.
That night my father phoned my mother.
“I’ve found the perfect religion for our son,” he announced.
My mother asked the obvious question.
“Are the Mormons Christians?”
“For sure,” said my father.
“And what exactly is the basis of their beliefs?” she asked.
Dad paused for a moment.
“Vomiting seagulls.”
Eight months later I was baptized.