The Firebrand is key but also is his contrast with Ashleigh. Ashleigh is the appealing part of the LDS faith. He is faithful, but reasonable. He does not accept every scrap of support for the Word of Wisdom uncritically.

The Firebrand is blinded by his own zeal. He grabs every scrap of evidence without examining it.

The strengthening of my own faith was engendered by admiration of the Ashleighs while I could not intellectually accept LDS doctrine.

I guessed at all of those things, but I think you need to exaggerate the intellectual parts of the story. Make it crystal clear that that was what was lacking for you. Then, when Elder Firebrand walks onto the scene, the reader will immediately recognize your frustration and respect your ultimate decision.

For instance, the Elder "Firebrand" narrative takes up about a third or so of the essay, but is completely unrelated to the apparent theme of the essay, which is either something about how living in a community where religion is a serious issue helps to strengthen commitment even in those that do not share the predominant faith, or about how most Mormons are actually quite nice people...I couldn't really tell. While the theme isn't in sharp focus, it is apparent that that narrative element hasn't been framed or "integrated" into the argument. But it is so much stronger than the other narrative elements {like the previous discussions and the Elder from Joplin, etc.) that it would seem to the typical reader that the central theme of your essay would have to be developed or clarified by this particular incident (i.e. highlighting the contrast between "normal" Mormons and the kooks--loved the part about caffine not entering your bloodstream for 12 hours ). Yet even as the strongest narrative, the "Ashleigh and Firebrand" story is not well developed. Not only does it not further the theme of the essay, the narrative is actually quite weak (meaning that the other narrative elements are very weak indeed), having just three lines of dialogue and as many depictions of actions, the rest being filled out with "train of thought" meanderings with no discernable relationship to the narrative or the theme of the essay.

To tighten the organizational structure (which you need to do if this is going to be called an essay, whether or not you do anything with the narrative), you first need to pick a premise or theme that you are writing about. There can also be subthemes and counterthemes (in fact, since in most essays the premise can be disputed, there must be recognition of countervailing arguments). Either of the two themes I tried to pick out would work, as might such ideas as, "Mormons cannot magically convert just anyone," "Methodism is very much like/unlike Mormonism," "People of all faiths can be a little creepy even when this is clearly [not] a result of their faith," or "I just don't get all this 'religion' stuff, but Methodism seems a safer place to learn than Mormonism, which apparently causes a certain incidence of mild 'kookiness' in users'." But you have to pick out a theme and organize your material and thoughts around that central idea.

Because personal experiences form the core of your evidence for presenting your ideas about whatever theme this essay is supposed to explore, you need to extend and balance the narratives, and list all the 'statements' that each story can be used to support or contest. Then you have to create an 'argument list' for your central premise or theme which clarifies which 'statements' support or oppose the premise (you could--in fact, probably should--also work the other way, by looking at your list of statements and deciding what theme they constitute an 'argument list' for deciding or exploring). Having chosen a theme, you also need to decide whether you are writing an exploration of that theme (here is a bunch of evidence and thoughts related to this theme) or an argumentative/decisive (this is why I believe/disbelieve [or why you the reader should believe/disbelieve] the premise). This piece lends itself to either treatment, depending on what you choose as the organizing theme.

Organization of an argumentative piece has to give primacy to logical structure, so evidence and counter evidence for each point must be placed in relationship to each other. In contrast, exploratory organization of narrative material should probably be chronological or thematic...or perhaps just associative. I imagine that most of the themes that would fit this piece would tend to be exploratory rather than argumentative, so you can probably keep most of the material in essentially the same order. But because you use both associational and chronological ordering, you need to be clearer which is occuring and why, which I cannot comment further on without definition of the theme.

When I began to write the story, it was with the intent of writing up the humorous anecdote about "The Firebrand." Perhaps there is more there.

For my part, I don't know what an essay is. I have had no formal training beyond a weak class in freshman comp. My aim is to tell a readable story and occasionally to try and "layer" the story.