A Borrowed Book, a Changed Life

November 2016

By the time two Mormon missionaries came to his door, Donovan Gregory had completely discounted organized religion. But when one of them simply wouldn’t stop talking, Gregory relented because he was intrigued by the idea of Jesus Christ visiting the Americas.

“I made them a deal,” Gregory remembers. “If they let me borrow their book, I’d let them come back and share a lesson with me.”

In his second lesson with the missionaries, Gregory asked every question he could imagine, and to his surprise they had answers. Soon he was baptized. Before leaving on a mission to Reno, Nevada, Gregory became a BYU student. “The classes, the professors, and the ward I was attending - it was all a testimony-strengthening experience,” he says.

Two years later, Gregory is now back at BYU studying in the College of Humanities and working toward a minor in Biblical Hebrew. None of this would have been possible if it weren’t for his BYU needs-based scholarship. “My mom is a single mother,” he says. “If it wasn’t for my scholarship, I honestly wouldn’t be able to attend here.”