Gurcharan Singh Gill was born and raised in India in the 1930s. As a member of the Sikh faith, he’d been taught that one of two things happens when a person dies: they either keep learning lessons on earth through reincarnation, or their divine “spark” merges back with God, like a raindrop returning to the ocean.
When Gill was 18 years old, his beloved older sister passed away, and a month later, his baby brother did too. In the wake of these devastating losses, Gill couldn’t shake the feeling that, somewhere, the spirits of his siblings lived on.
On an episode of the All In podcast, Gill’s grandson James Goldberg and James’s wife, Nicole, share Gill’s inspiring story of becoming the first Sikh to convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Goldbergs have also written a book about Gill’s conversion: Latter-day Sikh.
Finding the Church
In 1950, Gill moved to California in the United States for college. Unfamiliar with Christian beliefs and suddenly surrounded by Christian classmates, he began asking questions about the afterlife.
“People loved answering his questions,” James says. “But they didn’t have answers that seemed to satisfy him.” Gill was told that Jesus Christ saves only those who are baptized and who accept Him on earth. Naturally, this didn’t sit right with him; Gill wondered about his siblings who had died without a knowledge of Christ.
Then one day, his friend’s mom told him, “You should talk to the Mormons.”
She knew that Latter-day Saints had specific beliefs about baptism for the dead. One of Gill’s classmates happened to be a member of the Church, so he approached her with his questions. She felt unequipped to give him answers but invited him to stake conference that Sunday.
“One of the talks was about the plan of salvation,” Nicole says. “It just spoke to him so deeply, and he just thought, ‘This is the answer I’ve been looking for. This is what I’ve been trying to figure out.’”
Gill stood up after the meeting and looked around the room. He saw a teenage boy and immediately felt he’d known him before he was born.
Gill approached the young man and asked him, “Do you have a message from God for me?”
The boy’s name was Jan Johnson, and his parents happened to be stake missionaries. Gill took the missionary lessons in their home, and later, the Johnsons invited Gill to live with them.
“They were his family in the US since he hadn’t gone back to India,” Nicole says. “They were always there throughout his life and really important.”
“These were people who shared the gospel with all of themselves, with love,” James explains. “It wasn’t just like, ‘Oh, we’re going to do a missionary discussion,’ but they were there for you. They wanted to hear your story. They wanted you to feel safe and connected.”
Through the missionary lessons, Gill realized the full scope of what Jesus had accomplished for mankind, of what He had accomplished for his siblings who had passed away. Jesus became more than an interesting figure or possibility: Gill embraced Him as the Savior.
Receiving and Believing His Patriarchal Blessing
Not long after being baptized, Gill wanted to receive his patriarchal blessing, which includes a declaration of a person’s lineage in the house of Israel. Latter-day Sikh describes what happened when he went to the patriarch’s home.
The patriarch and his wife asked Gill a lot of questions, getting to know him and his background. Normally, the patriarch would have then placed his hands on Gill’s head and waited for words of blessing to come into his mind by inspiration. But the patriarch hesitated. “I’m not ready to give you a blessing now,” he admitted, “because I don’t know your lineage.”
This was during the 1950s, a time when “a lot of Latter-day Saints were still thinking about lineage in racial terms,” James explains on the All In episode. “Here’s a patriarch who’s a faithful guy trying to do his best, but I think understandably is nervous about ‘What do I say?’ and ‘Where does [a person from India] fit?’”
But a month later, the patriarch called Gill back. “[He] had decided to do what he always did, putting his trust in God to give a blessing through him,” the Goldbergs write in Latter-day Sikh. Gill was declared a member of the tribe of Ephraim and assured that he would be able to do temple work for his ancestors and share the gospel with his people.
“He loved his blessing and felt like it was such a comfort and a guidance for him,” Nicole says.
Marrying Vilo
Gill later attended Brigham Young University. Wanting to marry, he began looking for someone who was spiritually strong and knew what she wanted. He found that in a woman named Vilo Pratt.
Vilo had been through relationships with people who seemed good on paper, but they didn’t have a spiritual foundation of dignity, respect, and moral consistency that was so important to her. She wanted someone who was devoted to her and to the gospel with their whole heart and soul. She found this in Gill.
But at the time, 90 percent of Americans opposed interracial marriage. Vilo’s mom also had concerns of her own—she’d grown up in the Latter-day Saint colonies in Mexico and had seen struggles with interracial marriage. But Vilo and Gill decided to move forward. Though they faced further opposition, they believed in their spiritual strength and relied on God to help them. Instead of listening to public opinion, they put their trust in Jesus Christ.
“That’s what my grandparents did for decades,” James says. “And they went through lots of different life experiences and had just a beautiful relationship.”
Together, Gill and Vilo accomplished amazing things. They became the first mission leaders in India, fulfilling the promise in Gill’s patriarchal blessing, and Gill later served as a stake president and earned a PhD. Through it all, he held fast to the truth of the gospel.
“It was really important to my grandpa that the goal is not just to be a picture-perfect, ideal Latter-day Saint,” James says. “The goal is to be changed and exalted as a human race by reaching for God.”
Hear more about Gill on the full All In episode.
