When he was 11, Josh Brown’s (Oak Grove Ward) parents divorced. 

“I really struggled, especially as an insecure teenager and fell into a bad crowd and was having a hard time fitting in the church,” he remembers.

Over the next few years Josh moved back and forth between Colorado where his mother moved and Kansas City where his father lived. 

Josh remembers having an interview with a bishop during those teenage years, and at the end of their meeting, the bishop asked him to give a closing prayer.

“I rattled off a prayer I’d probably said a million times. The next thing I knew I was in tears, I literally couldn’t speak, my chest was on fire, it was burning. I was completely overcome. It seemed like it lasted for eternity, but it was probably just a minute. I was finally able to finish the prayer. I’ll never forget. The bishop said to me, ‘That was the Holy Spirit.’

“That was a pivotal moment in my life: all that stuff I’d learned in the church was really true. At that moment I knew that the church was true.”

But things were not better at home or in his life, and he turned away from the church.

After graduating from high school Josh joined the Marines and was trained as an air traffic controller. Later he married Christine, a friend from Kansas City, and after his discharge, the couple moved back to Kansas City. There Josh worked in airport security while he tried to get hired by the FAA.

Finally 14 months later, Josh thought things were looking up when he got a job with the FAA in California. But things took a turn for the worse when talks between the FAA and the union broke down, and he was given a huge pay cut. It was bad timing, as Christine was now pregnant, so the couple decided to move back to Kansas City to be closer to her family. 

Again the search for a job was on. It was eight more months before Josh could get an interview but no job. Finally after several more months, thanks to old friends from the military, he got hired by the FAA in Kansas City. 

Fast forward three years later to 2013 now Josh and Christina have two young boys.   Christina was taking their sons to story time at the library and invited Josh’s mother, Valorie Moore, who was living in Kansas City, to go with them.

Valorie had tried to invite her son and his family to dinner with the missionaries several times, but the more she pushed, the more Josh and Christina weren’t interested. 

At story time, Valorie recognized some other young mothers there as sisters from the Shoal Creek Ward and introduced Christina to Anne Matthys and Katie Stokes. They became fast friends.

A few years later they invited Christina to work in the Cub Scout program with them and she accepted.

Then in November of 2017 they invited Christina and the children to the Primary program at church. They went and even stayed for the full three-hour block. They continued to go back to church every week.

Josh and Christina bought a new house that happened to be within the boundaries of the ward where Christina and the boys had been attending. That was not a coincidence Josh thinks now.

“We hadn’t even moved in, I’m over in the new house, painting in the basement, and I hear the doorbell ring. I go upstairs and there’s two missionaries standing there.”

The missionaries began teaching the family, all except Josh who made sure he wasn’t around when they came.

“After a few months my wife tells me something that my oldest son had told her. He said: ‘I look forward to going to church on Sunday, because I feel broken, and church puts me back together again.’”

His son’s words really impacted his life.

“That really hit me,” Josh said. “’My family’s going to church and what am I doing? I knew the church was true. What was I doing at home when my family is at church every Sunday?”

Despite his inactivity, Josh said he the church was the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“I was inactive from 1997 to 2018. That entire time I knew the church was true, but for whatever reason I just couldn’t come back.”

The next Sunday Christina found Josh ironing his clothes for church and got pretty excited. 

“I started going to church with her. I had Word of Wisdom problems but quit them.”

Looking back Josh can see how all the pieces fit together to bring them to this point. The job searches, the stress of working in California, the moves.

“I look back on that year as a real blessing. Heavenly Father needed me to go through that before I got that job in KC.”

Christina and their oldest, Ayden, decided to get baptized.

“Bishop Joshua Matthys pulled me aside and said ‘I did some digging. I’d like you to baptize your wife and son.’ It just blew me away,” said Josh.

They were baptized in June of 2018, and in Oct. 2021 the whole family was sealed in the Kansas City Missouri Temple. In March 2022 Josh was called to be in the bishopric of the Oak Grove Ward.

“Just looking back, it’s absolutely amazing that Heavenly Father was extremely aware of me all the time. Throughout the whole time I was inactive, he was blessing me left and right. Having experiences that weren’t fun at the time, I look back at them as blessings. It’s been a pretty wild journey. It started with an invitation to come to a primary presentation.”