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Eddie and Nichole Ramirez, of Orem, tell their conversion story to the teachings of the Bible and becoming Jehovah's Witnesses. They attend the Kingdom Hall in American Fork. March 19, 2021. 

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Nichole and Eddie Ramirez, attend the Kingdom Hall in American Fork. They tell their story about becoming Jehovah's Witnesses. March 19, 2021. 

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This Kingdom Hall, the meeting place for Jehovah's Witnesses, is in American Fork. March 19, 2021. 

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Active congregations meet at the Kingdom Hall location in Provo. For meeting times and addresses, visit http://jw.org. March 19, 2021. 

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English and Spanish congregations meet at this Spanish Fork Kingdom Hall for Jehovah's Witnesses.  For information, visit http://jw.org. March 19, 2021. 

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They can dance and eat just about anything they want. They can have alcohol, but they don’t participate in warfare or openly support political parties. They love God and their neighbors — they are Jehovah’s Witnesses.

An often misunderstood group of worshippers in God and Christ, Jehovah’s Witnesses have more in common with other religions than not, according to Robert Hendriks, United States spokesman for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“We are Jehovah’s Witnesses. He is our God and we are his,” Hendriks said.

Hendriks said God is God always and we have been asked to remember him always. They practice their religion every day.

“You will be witnesses of me to all the nations of the Earth,” Hendriks said of God’s calling his disciples. “We take that personally.”

Of their love of Christ, Hendriks noted, “Christ was the foremost Jehovah’s Witness.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses, like many other Christian religions, bring God’s message to their neighbors by going door to door, through social media and phone calls with the purpose of witnessing. They don’t proselytize for converts.

That does not mean they don’t have them. Utah County residents Eddie and Nichole Ramirez are such converts.

Eddie Ramirez, 29 and Nichole Ramirez, 30, of Orem, have a pretty great life. They found each other and then the Bible and then Jehovah’s Witnesses.

With helpful discussions from other Jehovah’s Witnesses, they found the waters of baptism in 2014 and a group of church brothers and sisters that support them.

That happy life the Ramirez family leads now was not always the case.

Eddie had been a troubled teen that spent time in juvenile detention, and Nichole didn’t give the Bible, or its teachings a first or second thought.

Their journey is part of a greater story about the focus on the love of God and Christ that is the story of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

As a teenager, Eddie says he started going to wild parties, listening to obscene music, and got into graffiti. Eventually he started “tagging” trains, buildings, fences, billboards, etc. This landed him in a lot of trouble and as a result he spent three and a half months in juvenile detention.

While in juvenile detention he found he had a lot of alone time. He came across a Bible and started reading.

He read Genesis through Deuteronomy before being transferred to another facility, but couldn’t take the Bible with him.

“I remember saying to myself, ‘I gotta get it together.’ ” Eddie said. As he looked at some of the others in juvenile detention, he realized he did not want to continue on this path.

“I was moved into a cell that had a small hole in the wall. I could see the mountains. I would look out at nature through this little hole that was not supposed to be there,” Eddie said. “I remember just sitting there and praying for a chance to get my life back together, to make things right, I’m not even an adult yet. I was very emotional.”

“But when I got out, I forgot,” Ramirez said.

Not long after he began a pattern of stealing. It was during this time that he met Nichole.

“I was working at a jewelry store in the University Mall, and I see Eddie walk in and I said to myself, ‘This kid’s going to steal from me,’ ” recalls Nichole. ” ‘I’m not going to give him a chance, I’m going to just stop it before it happens.’ “

And that is how they met. Years later Eddie Ramirez admits, he indeed intended to steal something that day. After a few months they began dating.

One day in 2010, they ran into Eddie’s uncle, who was a Jehovah’s Witness, at a grocery store.

“I remember him saying to me, ‘When are you going to get your life together?’ ” Eddie noted.

His uncle suggested they study with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Eddie remembered his prayer while in juvenile detention and agreed.

Nichole recalls, “I knew a little bit about the Bible, I didn’t really trust it, but I don’t mind talking to people.”

A couple, who were Jehovah’s Witnesses, visited them and Nichole thought, “It is not my intention to study the Bible, but these are very nice people, not preachy, they are welcome back anytime.”

Nichole recalls the first time they went to the Kingdom Hall, the name given to the church or building where Jehovah’s Witnesses hold their study and discussions.

“I remember when I left the first meeting, I thought, ‘I don’t understand how all these people can be so nice.’ We went to another meeting and they were that nice again. I fell in love with them,” Nichole Ramirez said.

She went on to say, “I had grown up thinking the Bible was complicated, outdated, untrustworthy, but the more I studied, I was impressed at how simple it is. It was like finding puzzle pieces and seeing them fit into place.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses use the King James Version of the Bible and one published by the church that has more modern, easier-to-understand words. That change happened in the 1950s when most translations had extracted God’s name, Hendriks noted.

The Ramirezes continued their study of the Bible and were baptized, by immersion, as Jehovah’s Witnesses in July of 2014. They attend the American Fork congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

There are eight small congregations in Utah County and three Kingdom Halls, with locations in Spanish Fork, American Fork and Provo. Four of the eight groups are Spanish speaking.

There were 250,000 baptisms in 2020, with 8.7 million Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide. Hendriks said those numbers are growing as much as 30 percent in some areas.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are most widely known for their publication, “The Watchtower,” which is distributed to 88 million readers each year. According to Hendriks, it is the biggest printing is the world.

They have been called peculiar because of some their practices, including not taking in foreign blood into their bodies, along with everything from eating blood pudding to a blood transfusion.

They don’t celebrate holidays, except for the day Christ died. This year it is celebrated on Saturday, March 27.

Because the Bible is their guiding compass, they are continually printing it in new languages for worldwide distribution.

Recently, and for the first time ever by any church organization, Jehovah’s Witnesses have produced videos of the complete Bible in American Sign Language.

Now deaf individuals wanting to have a deeper, richer experience with the Bible can have one.

The Bible is their only guide, Hendriks said.

“There are no clergy at all. There are Elders and Teachers to shepherd the congregation, but that’s it. We never take a collection and there is no paywall.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses stay neutral because of their ministry, Hendricks said.

To elevate one person over another, pick political sides or fight in a war takes members away from their main focus and that is God.

“Our allegiances are to one government, God’s government,” Hendriks added. “We try to learn from the Bible what he did so we can do it. The Bible is our guide.”

For more information about Jehovah’s Witnesses, visit http://jw.org.