Joe

I was raised in a rather interesting denomination called the Church of God (Anderson, IN) no relation to the Pentecostal Churches of God. They're a branch off of Wesleyanism (hence they're Arminian), but they're anabaptist (meaning they basically believe in believer's baptism, not sacramental baptism). They also believe communion and footwashing are ordinances (yes, footwashing ... looking back that was very difficult for me to overcome).

About the time I turned 15 my mom and stepdad divorced after 12 years of marriage. That's when my faith became extremely important to me. I couldn't cling to my mom because I so vehemently hated the divorce that she initiated. I couldn't cling to my dad because he was in San Antonio ... an 8-hour drive away. I couldn't cling to my stepdad coz I rarely saw him. I couldn't cling to my grandparents because every time i talked about what I was going through with them, my mom would get angry with them. I couldn't talk with my brother because it was his first divorce (my stepdad is his dad) and so he had enough problems as it was without me adding to it. I only really had one place to turn and one person to turn to ... God. I fell head over heels in love with God and my faith.

This resulted in me participating in the religious forums of Myspace quite a bit. An SDA friend of mine in the Christian Teens of Myspace forum asked me to help him show the Catholics "the error in their ways" on the Catholic forum. Fortunately, I encountered educated Catholics there who shut down my first attempt at disproving the faith ... confession. They showed me that it was supported by the Bible. So, I backed off a bit and I had to think. I stepped back to took a look at what I believed in the context of Sacred Scripture ... and I realized that I should let the Cathollics explain what they believed and why they believed it. This began a 2-year long journey through which I asked about pretty much every topic of disagreement between Arminian Anabaptists and Catholics. The rosary helped me a lot. I got over my thoughts on Mary and the saints very quickly and I downloaded a virtual rosary to pray on my computer. I struggled with the last 2 Glorious mysteries, though (the Assumption of Mary and the Coronation of Mary). I just couldn't find them in Scripture. But God granted me a Spirit of understanding and a Spirit of discernment. I was at the time working on reading Scripture (the Protestant Scripture ... meaning Scripture less 7 books and 9 chapters) all the way through. And God showed me some interesting things I'd never noticed before, especially in the books of the Kings. I noticed how the mother of every king of Judah was mentioned (never the name of a wife except in the case of David and Solomon). There were some other things too ... but I eventually got over all of them. It was about January (or February) of 2007 that I realized how Catholic my beliefs were and I was so shocked and scared that I stopped. I completely stopped EVERYTHING. Studying, praying (except for short prayers to God), EVERYTHING. But then, as a high school graduation gift, my church gave me a devotional book on the Passion and there was a whole section on The Last Supper. Well, remember what I said about footwashing being an ordinance I grew up with? I couldn't find one word about it being an ordinance in ANY of these writings, including one by St. Augustine --- i can't remember who the others were by ... mostly Protestants. So I went back onto the Catholic forum on myspace and asked about footwashing ... and I realized that it was not a traditional belief AT ALL. No one in 1900 years of history had believed that footwashing was an ordinance until a reform movement began in Anderson, Indiana. This made me (yet again) have to reconsider all my beliefs. Then I went to a Protestant church camp in Pollock, Louisiana and on the last night the preacher gave an AMAZING sermon about Isaiah 40. I think it touched almost all of us there in some way or another (though it affected me in a lasting way). I went up to the "altar" which was a really pew turned the other way that I could kneel at, and I prayed very fervently for God to forgive certain sins of mine that I had been struggling with (and still struggle with occasionally). He told me to go tell someone about it. So I went to my camp counselor to talk and he gave me some helpful advice. Unfortunately, he couldn't give me the one thing I so desperately needed and wanted ... absolution. A couple weeks later I fell into the same sin again. By now it was mid-August 2007. I was getting ready to start my freshman year of college and was packing up my stuff here at home. I was talking with a friend and I finally decided I needed to go through RCIA. So I looked up the Newman Center on my college campus and sent an email to the Christian ed director. However, a Catholic friend of mine from Buffalo, New York was worried because the newman center's confirmation program and RCIA program were run together so she ran a search and found another parish near my campus which turned out to have a more convenient RCIA time and I went there. Then she told me that the next day was a Holy Day of Obligation (the Assumption of Mary) and that even though I wasn't Catholic yet, I should probably try to go. So I drove down to the bookstore ... bought my first Catholic Bible (I don't even use that one anymore ... but it's the Catholic Youth Bible ... using the NAB text), my first Catechism of the Catholic Church, and my first Sunday missal, The Catholic Church and Conversion by G.K. Chesterton, and a book on Vatican trivia and my first tangible rosary --- im a trivia freak ... lol. Then the next day I went to mass at the Feast of the Assumption 2007 ... my first non-wedding mass ... and then had my rosary blessed. There was no turning back for me after that point. I enrolled with the RCIA program at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church and became a full-fledged Catholic at Easter Vigil of this year (2008) and if I may so, the journey has been fantastic so far. :)