Mafia to Mormon

A couple weeks ago I went to the library during lunch to return some books and check out one I had on hold. I decided to browse through the LDS section. I decided to look for a small book that would be an easy read. I’ve got a goal to read a non-fiction book every month. I only made it through half of a book last month. I found a book with the title Mafia to Mormon. It’s a true story about the conversion of a man named Mario Facione. It was basically an auto biography. I couldn’t put it down. I read a couple chapters during lunch, then when I got home, my wife had a baby shower to go to, so I read the whole time with my two kids climbing all over me. I finished the book before going to bed that night. I’ve never finished a 100+ page book that fast before. I was just so impressed and amazed at his whole story. The man was a central figure in many big crime operations and he was able to walk away from it all with the Lord’s help. It was very inspirational. I pondered it all day the following day while doing yard work. I think there are two things that really stood out to me about his story:

1. In the Mafia, a promise is life-binding. You just don’t go back on your word, or you die. It was by someone’s word that made Mario’s life safe from the mafia. Mario left the mafia because he made a promise to God. With his background, I’m sure it’s very hard for him to understand why anyone would break a covenant with the Lord.
2. Mario saw a video about the temple in one of his early discussions. He felt he had to get inside that temple. That was a driving force that led to his conversion and determination to put his life on the line to leave the mafia.

I highly recommend this book. It is an easy read really. It has a fair number of typos and obvious grammitical erros as it is in Mario’s own words.