There are many Mormons here in Houston. I most often find them to be very devout. They say they are Christian and proclaim Christ so that's good enough for me. Their works bear good fruit and that is how we are instructed to know what a Christian is, and not by some legalistic technicality. None of us control the religion, or denomination we are born into. It is how we think and behave that matters most. What is in our hearts that pleases God. No denomination has the absolute truth. Mormons are just as Christian as Catholics, Pentecostals, and Baptists. Certainly they get some things wrong and some things right.
Sorry to say this, but it is the truth: You are embracing the deliberate falsehoods they put out. I am not being harsh, but realistic.
I live in the home of America's Second Great Revival, aka "The Burned over District". Started by Charles Finney c. 1803, (and the church where he claims to begin his revivals in Dresden, NY on Seneca Lake is about 10 miles from my home) he began a revival that went from Albany to Buffalo along the Erie Canal the fires of revival were so great that all historians, liberal and conservative acknowledge that fact. Naturally where truth is triumphant, error soon follows as a counterfeit. Mormonism is no exception.
Several times, I have been at Hill Cumorah where the con man (among other things) claimed to dig up gold plates, and they tell a preposterous tale of a huge battle among native Americans who used chariots and killed 100,000 or 1,000,000 (depending on the source) people who were buried on a drumlin (a glacier formation) that has never been authenticated by any relic in New York State . Nor is the story mentioned in the NYS Regents standards for American History.
It may be that your confusion is due to the fact that the Reorganized Latter Day Saints changed their name in 2001 to "Community of Christ", and their effort to say "we are Christians too" has persuaded some who know little about either the LDS or the RLDS (each of which believe the other is apostate). The leopard may change his name, but he can not change his skin. The history of that skin is very anti-Christian, and is led by a so-called prophet who was a noted con man, a man with a criminal record for using a "seer stone" a bank embezzler, a serial adulterer, a pedophile since he married three girls under 15.
There is no prophet of the TRUE God in the OT with similar nefarious credentials.
ASk your Mormon friends about this (in)famous couplet that describes this, that the Mormons are taught:
"As man is, god once was is;
As god is, man may become:
Ask if it is a true representation of their belief. (It is but they usually deny it) And that denial is rooted in a web of deceit, because they are taught to be evasive when talking to non-LDS. Their name for that is "casting pearls before swine" and THAT is an accurate representation of their opinions of Christians.
When you said "
Their works bear good fruit and that is how we are instructed to know what a Christian is, and not by some legalistic technicality. " you are trying to judge a book by its cover and are not seeing the rotten contents of the book inside. I t is NOT a "legal technicality" that makes makes Mormons not Christians it is that they have an entirely different god than do Christians, they have an entirely different jesus than do Christians, they have an entirely different holy spirit than do Christians, and their salvation is entirely different because in the BoM, one verse says "we are saved by grace AFTER doing we can"
I am running short on time, so I can not go into much more detail, but if you ask again, I will give more details to demonstrate that Mormonism is from the Father of all lies.