For UNC senior Anna McElroy, a knock on the door opened her up to a new way of life.
After initially rebuffing the efforts of two Mormon missionaries she met outside a friend’s apartment door, McElroy had a change of heart after seeing a “South Park” satire of the religion.
She saw another pair of missionaries in the Pit and began talking to them about their faith’s answers to life’s big questions.
“I was trying to be a better person,” she said. “It helped me find answers and made me feel comforted and that I had a purpose.”
Steve Price, a spokesman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said the number of church members in town has grown from about 80 in the 1980s to about 1,200 members currently.
“(The growth) is twofold,” he said. “A portion of it is conversion and another portion is that the education is so good at the University that a larger number of people who are already Mormon are moving to the area.”
At the University, Price said the population has grown from 12 to about 150 students in the same amount of time.
With the help of missionaries Michael Call and Jeremy Merrill, McElroy was baptized as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the weekend of March 25.
Before her baptism, she talked with Call and Merrill for six months to investigate their religion.