By Maurine Jensen Proctor
Photography by Scot Facer Proctor

click photos to enlarge

It was Rudolph Rosas' dream to be able to see the prophet.

Five years ago Rudolph Rosas was a tough guy, who cussed like a sailor and prided himself on never crying.  As a Marine Reconnaissance Ranger, he felt invincible, a hard-nosed rowdy who felt invincible in any situation—whether it was staring death in the face or parachuting into a danger zone.

He was a man of steel, tattooed with a symbol—swift, silent, deadly.

Yet Rudolph lives in the San Antonio Temple district and two years ago when his ward in Kerrville, Texas baptized over 30 converts, he was one of them.

Rudolph with Bruce MacDonald

It's like Bruce MacDonald, his ward mission leader said, "You have to go fishing and just keep casting the bait when you are doing missionary work.  Cast it enough times, and you'll find the fish who are hungry for the gospel."  Rudolph was hungry.  He just didn't know it.

Then came the crisis.  Safe with his house and three cars, he thought he had it all.  But there in the green, hill country of Texas, it rained incessantly one time about four years ago and the Guadalupe River swelled in boiling, muddy swirls that heaved over its banks and flooded streets of his town.  Rudy watched helplessly as the water rose in his house to the base of his windows.  Everything was destroyed, soaked and stained, waterlogged by the flood.  His three cars, his furniture, his house—a lifetime of work decimated under water.

To make matters worse, it was about the same time that he realized that his teenagers were adrift on another swell.  They were into heavy metal music and wild lifestyles. "My kids had been raised the wrong way," he lamented.

He had no flood insurance to rebuild his house, and feeling lost he began to say to his wife, "Let's go to church."  She always found an excuse why she didn't want to go. 

"A year after the flood," said Rudolph, "I was in my backyard at the very bottom of the emotional pit, and I started praying. I said, 'Lord, my house is a mess.  My kids have all gone crazy.  I want to go back to church.  I need some help."

About two minutes later, two sister missionaries came up to the house.  "Up to that time, I've had all kinds of people come to my house representing different religions, and I would never listen to them.  I would shut the door.  But this time I let them in the house and as they began to teach me they said lots of right things.  They said things that made a lot of sense. 

"They told me about the Book of Mormon and about Joseph Smith and finally they said, 'Rudy, would you pray tonight and ask our Father in Heaven if what we have told you is true and if Joseph Smith is a prophet?'"

He answered, "I can do that, but what is there going to be, a lightning bolt or what?"

"Our Father in Heaven doesn't work that way," they said, "but you'll know it is him."

As they were leaving, the sisters left him pamphlets and a Book of Mormon, but Rudolph pointed to a brown book in one sister's hand and said, "What's that?  I want to read it too.  I promise I'll give it back to you."

It was Truth Restored by Gordon B. Hinckley.

A few days passed and Rudolph had done no reading.  He worked two jobs and found no slack time to study.  One night he came home from his second job, exhausted and completely drained.  He sat down to rest when he noticed the stack of books and material on the coffee table.  "These missionaries are coming tomorrow, and I can't not have read anything.  I turned the light on over the fireplace and I prayed.  If these things are true, let me know, in the name of Jesus Christ."

He read the verses from Moroni 10 that the missionaries had marked; he went on to read parts of 3 Nephi.  He forged ahead to read the Joseph Smith pamphlet.  "I didn't get any warm fuzzies," he said.

He picked up President Hinckley's book and read about the Holy Ghost.  I would like that gift for my family, he thought.  Then he read about baptism, and finally something just clicked.

I was sprinkled as a baby in another church.  My parents and my godparents were there, but I realized for the first time that I hadn't been baptized yet.

And I said out loud, "I need to be baptized."

Rudolph can't tell the story without weeping.  The one-time hard guy who never cried, took two fingers, lifted up his glasses and tried to wipe away the tears before they coursed down his cheeks. 

"I heard a still, small voice.  It wasn't a loud voice, but I heard it audibly.  "Don't worry about it.  Joseph Smith is a prophet."

"I got up and I looked around and I was by myself. I just became so full of joy that I cried most of the night.

"Before, growing up, I had felt emptiness in my church.  I had said my prayers but felt nothing.  Until that night.  I knew it was the Holy Ghost.

"Nothing in my life has been the same since then.  The next day the missionaries came and I was so excited to tell them what happened, but they already knew."

Rudolph went on describing the touch of the Lord in his life, the cascade of embraces from the heavens, the small reminders that he is known to God.  And the new convert became a fired up missionary.  What he found for himself he wanted to tell—and tell everybody.

"I know that I have been called to preach the gospel and tell people about Christ," he said.

"I feel like a person with one eye and I'm always looking forward for someone to talk about the gospel with.  If they don't believe me now, some day they'll know that what I'm saying is true.  They can never say, 'Rudy, you knew, and you didn't tell me.'

"It's bigger than life.  It's bigger than me.  There's just no words to describe it."

So he talks about the gospel and shares copies of the Book of Mormon freely.  At Hastings, a bookstore where he worked, one woman was offended when he described the great apostasy and went to tell the manager that Rudolph was talking about the gospel.  The manager called Rudolph in and told him not to talk to any more employees about the Church. "You've got to quit doing this, Rudy.  You are annoying a lot of people." What the manager didn't know was that Rudolph had already talked to all 30 employees, and the he was the last one on his list!

"As a former ranger, I always wondered what would happen to me if I died.  Now, I'm not afraid to die, so why should I be afraid to talk to anybody about the gospel?"

Click Here for Part Two of Rudolph Rosas and the San Antonio Temple Coverstone Ceremony