Guest Post: @mormongirl19

I asked a dear friend of mine owns an Instagram account with nearly 26 thousand followers. She is such an example to me, and I am so grateful for her willingness to do this and even more so to share her testimony of the gospel. I LOVE her story and her ability to love others. Here is her story.

I hate social media. Not something you’d expect to hear from someone with a social media account with almost 26 thousand followers, but it’s the truth. What bugs me about social media is that it is too often used as a fake highlight reel of a life we should all be envious of, or the complete opposite, as a place to rant and rave about how awful life is. It seems to me that the majority of posts these days are one or the other of these two extremes. There are no posts about daily life. No posts about miracles, blessings, or expressions of gratitude.

Yet, just like everyone else, I wanted nothing more than to fit in and I felt social media would be the first step to reaching this imagination of popularity I had built up in my head. On my 15th birthday the only thing I wanted was a smart phone. And the first thing I did after opening that little box and pulling out that small bright screen was open the app store and download Instagram. I didn’t really understand what it was, but everyone else had it so I knew I needed it to. I created a personal account for myself and started following all my friends. I posted pictures of my friends and my family, but each time I got on Instagram I felt sad by the two extremes of posts that I saw. I felt like there was something missing. This didn’t feel like the praised Instagram everyone was talking about. There seemed to be something missing from what I had thought Instagram would be.

When I created Mormongirl19, I had no idea what I was doing. I really did not consider my username before because I had no idea that this many people would actually see my posts. I remember thinking “Well, I’m Mormon, and I’m a girl, so how about mormongirl?” Has a nice ring to it, right? So I typed in and it comes up with the little message, “This username is taken. How about mormongirl12839, mormongirl1010, mormon375girl, or mormongirl19?”  Now that I’ve had the account for 2 years I look back on that moment and I have to laugh at myself. There were so many other names I could have chosen but instead I picked the first random thing that came into my head, and after seeing the name was taken, I just chose the suggested username with the easiest number to remember! I’ve had people ask me what the 19 stands for. Is it because you’re 19 years old? Is it because that is the age girls leave on their mission? And I just have to laugh and explain that my username is completely random. Since then I have thought about changing the name to something better, but in a way, ‘mormongirl19’ now fits me. Mormongirl19 is the one who made the account. Mormongirl19 is the one who shared posts. Mormongirl19 is the one who has 25,900 followers, and it wouldn’t be right to change it now after all that I have learned and accomplished under that name.

Before my account, I was having a really hard year. I was struggling with finding good friends. I had been receiving text messages from people I had never talked to telling me how horrible of a person I was. And mormongirl19 was kind of my safe haven. The first week I had my account I had no followers. After a first week with no followers I should have thought to myself, why did you make this account? Why are you still posting when you’re the only one reading it? I should have thought this, but I never did. Not once did I question my original desire to share the gospel over social media, even when I was only sharing it with myself. I kept posting, I kept sharing what I knew. And the funny thing about a testimony is, the more you share, the more you feel that conformation in your heart and know more deeply for yourself that what you are testifying of is true. And even though at first, I was technically only sharing with myself, I still felt my testimony grow knowing that the words that I posted I knew to be true.

By the end of the first week, I gained my first follower and after that the account kept growing on its own. By the end of the second week mormongirl19 had 1,000 followers. After 2 months it had reached 2,000. And today, 28 months later at 25,900 followers, my account still feels the same as the first week when I had 0 followers. It feels the same because I don’t think of the follower count, I think of the individuals, who just like me, face hard times and need a little pick me up from time to time.

I have had a lot of experiences with these individuals. Some have asked me to pray for them and their needs, some have told me their stories and thanked me for my account, and many have I had the opportunity to share a message of the gospel via DM. I have grown to love the individual and to appreciate the joy the gospel brings in my life. I love the feeling I get when I share that happiness with others.

A lot of people have asked who I am because they want to know and thank the person behind the messages. But to those people I say, if you want to know and thank the person behind these messages, you’re going to need to kneel down and thank your Heavenly Father. Everything I post is a message He has shared through His prophet. I may be behind the post, but I am not behind the message. So, as I have in the past, I choose to keep the account as anonymous as I am able to.

I would like to bear my testimony that I do believe each of us are children on God. You have a role to play in this life that no one else can play. You were born in a place and time where you can make a difference. A difference that no one else can make. I know this to be true, and as crazy as it sounds, I learned it from mormongirl19. So I guess you could say in a lot of ways, I really do love social media.

Instagram: @mormongirl19