Romney on Faith, Family and Private Life
…Describing his mission in France, he talked about how he would walk the streets of Bordeaux up to 60 hours a week trying to convince people why they should convert — in French. Often he would have doors slammed in his face.
“When you’re off in a foreign place and you only take to your parents once or twice a year by phone — that’s all that’s allowed — and you’re out speaking to people day in and day out about your faith and your religion and differences between your faith and other faiths… you say, ‘OK, what’s important here? What do I believe? What’s truth? Is there a God? Is Jesus Christ the son of God?’” he told Borger.
“These are questions that are no longer academic. They’re critical because you’re talking about that day in and day out. And so I read scripture with much more interest and concern and sought to drive closer to God through my own prayer. And these things drew me closer to the eternal and convinced me that in fact there is a God. Jesus Christ is the son of God and my savior, and these are things that continue to be important in my life, of course.”
What many people don’t know is that during this time he was involved in a car accident as he was driving the mission president and his wife during a six-hour ride between Paris and the south of France. Their car was hit by what was believed to be a drunken driver. The mission president had to return to the United States because of his injuries, and his wife was killed.
Initially Romney was pronounced dead. He told CNN this was a time of “challenge and soul searching.”
“The person sitting next to me died, and others were severely injured. My injuries were not as severe as some might have thought. The policeman on the scene apparently thought I was in worse condition than I was and wrote, in French, ‘he is dead’ on my passport to distinguish me from others. That made it back to the United States in a press report that I had been killed in an accident. My parents heard it through the media, as did Ann,” he said in the interview…