Convert Roll Call!

[iwillrisenow]

Just wanted to start a thread for all of my fellow converts out there, so we can have a place to share about our journeys Home and the time since, whether we’re just starting to learn about the Church or have been in it for several decades.

Feel free to share your conversion story, ask those nagging questions, chat about the joys and struggles that come with being a convert, or anything else that you would like to do here.



A question to get us started: do you have a favorite patron saint of converts? If so, who?

 

[LegoGE1947]

Just wanted to start a thread for all of my fellow converts out there, so we can have a place to share about our journeys Home and the time since, whether we’re just starting to learn about the Church or have been in it for several decades.

Feel free to share your conversion story, ask those nagging questions, chat about the joys and struggles that come with being a convert, or anything else that you would like to do here.



A question to get us started: do you have a favorite patron saint of converts? If so, who?

John Henry Cardinal Newman.

 

[october_baby]

When I first started out as a christian,I knew absolutely nothing about christianity, I had a hatred of all things christian. I was baptized in a non-trinity, Jesus only pentecostal
church. Since I did’t know anything about christianity, I started to read about the history,
theology of christainty, and reading about the bible. I also read the bible every night. I was a bible literalist, which at that time, I thought all protestants were. As an interesting side note,
I took the stance that the wine and the bread were literally were the Body and Blood of Jesus.
I went to this church for about 7 or 8 months before I left, because the Pastor preached that
anyone who believed in the Trinity would go to Hell. And I found this to be unbiblical, also the fact that my uncle,grandmother, and sister who were God fearing christians, would be sent to Hell, was too much for me to bare. This started me to question protestantism, mainly there
were so many denominations and interpretations of the bible, what should I follow?
So I prayed to God to send me to his one true church.(For those who are interested, I DID NOT think this was the catholic church, as I had all the misconceptions and prejudices of
a non catholic.) I then lost my job and forced me to move back to the state and city I came from. I went back to drinking and smoking pot, but knew in my heart I wanted to be
with Jesus. so I went back to the Jesus only pentecostal church. but after a short time I
knew I could never subscribe to it’s theology. So I tried to go to a trinitarian pentecostal
church. But I was still drinking and smoking weed. Feeling like a unrepentant hypocrite,
also, I still had questions about who had the truth. I quit that church. Needless to say,
I knew I had to reform and I wanted to get back to the way it was when I first became a
christian. Then I did what for me at that time was unthinkable, I prayed to God that I would
join the catholic church and if it did’t work out I would give up forever. You see I thought
the catholic church was the most lax of all the christian religions. Well as any good catholic would tell you, catholicism is’nt easy or lax. I really got imformed in RICA.
I wish I could say that this was the end, but shortly after being confirmed I went homeless
and I gave up all together. A year later my sister died. 2 years later I realized that life
without Christ is not worth living, and the ONLY church for me was the catholic church.
I been going since 2009, and have been clean and sober since 2006. God has’nt abanded
me and has bee working on me the whole time. Thank God for the catholic church!

 

[Runner_grrrl]

I’m seriously considering converting. Currently Southern Baptist. Read about St. Bernadette and very interested in her and Our Lady of Lourdes.

 

[LegoGE1947]

I’m seriously considering converting. Currently Southern Baptist. Read about St. Bernadette and very interested in her and Our Lady of Lourdes.

I am a convert from Assemblies of God. Came into the Catholic Church in 2002. Never thought I would be a Catholic. But now I can’t fathom being anything else. Unfortunately my grown children think my wife and I are whacky because we have embraced Catholicism. They keep inviting us to their churches thinking we’ll revert back to being Protestants. I can’t go there because every time we do, a pastor or sunday school teacher bad-mouths the Catholic Church. For me that is an instant deal-breaker.

 

[Runner_grrrl]

I have always made a point of speaking to people of the Catholic faith to figure it all out myself. And now the Protestant arguments against Catholics just seem ridiculous. It makes me wonder if they have ever even bothered to learn about the faith. We are all Christians anyway!

 

[FriendlyFace]

I converted from the Episcopal Church.

 

[MrsLilreader]

Currently converting!

I’ve been in:
Assemblies of God,
Church of Christ,
Southern Baptist,
Baptist,
Non denominational,
Bible,
Methodist

And now I’ve found home. All those other churches have left me world weary and battle scarred, but tracing backwards I feel like I learned first hand about the great schism and I’m done with powerless religion. My immediate family are now practising the Messianic Jewish faith, and they are holding their breath hoping I won’t convert. Most of our knowledge of Catholicism came from Chick Tracts.

My husband no longer attends church, and is very resistant to Catholism and the unknown.

I feel on fire like I did 20 years ago when I accepted Christ. I feel free from my past, and I always felt haunted by it before. I know I’m not alone any more, and when I wake up afraid, I can pray the chaplet of divine mercy and feel His mercy and love wash over me. I can’t turn back now that I know real Truth!

 

[Delaine75]

I’m a convert (former Wiccan for MANY years). So glad I finally saw the truth!

 

[Ruthie_again]

I was raised Unitarian, which is to say “It’s all OK, whatever you want to believe is true.”

When I was about 15, I decided that there was a Creator, but thought it had no interest in me.

When I was 31, I discovered that I had a Higher Power that loved me personally.

About 9 years later, I had a very quiet and personal “conversion experience” and became Christian. I wandered among various non-Catholic churches, looking for a home, but finding problems with them all.

When I was 54, some ridiculous slander about the Pope (JPII) on a private Bible Study forum made me want to defend him. I wanted the facts, though, to counteract his ridiculous accusations. My search led me to the Catholic Answers website. As I read the truth about those accusations (mostly from the Chick Tracts), I kept finding myself saying, “But that’s what I believe!”

After refuting the accusations, I came back, to get answers to my own questions. What about Mary? And praying to saints? I found out that Catholics worship only God, and that nobody has to ask for intercession from anybody. (Now I do it all the time!)

And I discovered that Catholics do what I was already trying to: reading the Bible as a whole. I was good and fed up with the arguments on that old forum, between those who said (for example) that Mk 16:16 (“He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned”) meant baptism was necessary for salvation, and those who said that it wasn’t, that “he who does not believe will be condemned” means that only faith is necessary. One sentence from Jesus, two interpretations! I wound up thinking that, if the Bible is inerrant, then everything it says is true; if two verses seemed to say different things, then they must both be true. I think it may say something similar in Verbum Dei…

By the time I got through all those CA tracts, I was sure I wanted to be Catholic. And here I am! (60 year old fat broad does happy dance)

Interestingly enough, while this was happening to me, my DH (an ex-Catholic) was finding his own way back. So, just when I was nerving myself to tell him I had to be Catholic, he told me he had to. There was joy in our house that day!

 

[Larry1700]

I’m a convert (former Wiccan for MANY years). So glad I finally saw the truth!

Very interesting! I’d love to hear stories about your time as a Wiccan.

BTW, congrats on seeing the truth, and welcome home!

 

[Larry1700]

I’m a convert from Southern Baptist.

Scott Hahn’s books were extremely beneficial, as were Patrick Madrid’s, Karl Keating’s and David Currie’s.

I figure Scott Hahn will be proclaimed a saint someday!

 

[meme1961]

I’m a convert from Southern Baptist.

Scott Hahn’s books were extremely beneficial, as were Patrick Madrid’s, Karl Keating’s and David Currie’s.

I figure Scott Hahn will be proclaimed a saint someday!

Maybe not a Saint, but quite probably a Doctor of the Church!

 

[LegoGE1947]

Currently converting!

I’ve been in:
Assemblies of God,
Church of Christ,
Southern Baptist,
Baptist,
Non denominational,
Bible,
Methodist

And now I’ve found home. All those other churches have left me world weary and battle scarred, but tracing backwards I feel like I learned first hand about the great schism and I’m done with powerless religion. My immediate family are now practising the Messianic Jewish faith, and they are holding their breath hoping I won’t convert. Most of our knowledge of Catholicism came from Chick Tracts.

My husband no longer attends church, and is very resistant to Catholism and the unknown.

I feel on fire like I did 20 years ago when I accepted Christ. I feel free from my past, and I always felt haunted by it before. I know I’m not alone any more, and when I wake up afraid, I can pray the chaplet of divine mercy and feel His mercy and love wash over me. I can’t turn back now that I know real Truth!

Maybe we could all sing the country song “I’ve Been Everywhere”!

Videos of i’ve been everywhere

bing.com/videos

 

[gh4]

I was supposedly baptized at birth, by a priest at a Catholic Hospital, but have no record of that, nor can I get it at this point. (I tried when I worked at that hospital, the records weren’t there) My Birth Mother named me Judith Simone and I was born on the feast day of both of those saints (st. jude and st simon) on Oct. 28.
I was given up for adoption to a county welfare system and was adopted by my adoptive parents at the age of 2. My a-parents had me baptized in the United Church of Christ and I was raised in that church. My name was changed.
I left that religion when I turned 18 and moved out on my own.
I married a man whose father was a Pentecostal minister. That man scared the living daylights out of me!! (My husbands father was ordained by Jim Jones, the one who did the cool aid thing, YiKES!)
My husband and I got married at a JOP, neither one of us were big on religion at that time…
My husband died young (28) I raised the boys and we went to church here and there to whatever church was close for the next years.
A few years later (after my husband died) I dated and I almost married a man who was a preacher in the Church of Christ. I was baptized by immersion at that church because they don’t believe in infant baptism. (Church of Christ is VERY different from United Church of Christ)
Eventually my boys got into a Catholic Boy Scout Troop and I started going to Mass there, really loved the Mass and eventually joined the RCIA and became Catholic. Had a really REALLY good RCIA experience, great RCIA team too, loved every minute of it and was a little sad when it was over!!
I attended church for a very long time, got active in my parish and really enjoyed it. Eventually I ended up working most, if not all, weekends and kind of stopped going to church. Then I took care of my parents and didn’t have a relief person to watch them (they both had alzheimer’s) so I didn’t get to church for the 8 years or so I took care of them.
Then I moved out here to Arizona and started back to church and was so grateful that in our little town there was a catholic church about 1.5 miles from my home. I came from a church with about 5000 families (8 masses every weekend) and this little parish of less than 100 people was a bit of a shock to me, but it’s not horrible and we have a wonderful priest. (one vigil mass and one Sunday mass)
As our little town shrinks, I keep praying that they don’t make our parish a mission parish to another one or close it all together, it would be devastating to me and to the community to have our parish closed.
And that’s how I became Catholic.

And if there was much left out of our RCIA learnings, it was about saints. We never picked a saint for our confirmation nor did we talk about saints a lot! I’m kind of surprised about that considering we had Franciscan Priests and St. Clare Sisters at our church!
Most everything I’ve learned about saints, quite honestly has been on this board.

And that’s how I ended up Catholic with 2 catholic children!

 

[jenwha]

When I was a young girl, dad told me about God. Only my mother went to church (Presbyterian). I wasn’t made to go. Parents divorced in 1982. She quit going to church.

Teens-went wild. Men, drink, and pot. Many many years. Too many years. Really, really thought it was fun and fillfilling.

25-Discovered Chritianity was true. Shopped around for churches. Attended Pentecostal/Assemblies of God. Never got answers to any of my theological questions. Was disappointed at lack of having to do anything. Slipped back into old patterns.

Started having Catholics drifting in and out of my life. Had always been told they were nuts.

2010-Don’t know why, renewed interest in RCC. Wanting to do good to people, stop doing bad things, make amends for my past. Made an appt. with a priest to talk about why. (Why Mary? Why confession?) Etc. Everything he said made sense. Decided to join RCIA.

2011-Started RCIA.

April 2012- Became Catholic. Love it. Now I don’t understand Protestants.

Sept. 2012- Husband joins RCIA after hearing me rave about RCC.

Dec. 2012.-My soon to be 70 year old mother expresses serious interest in joining RCC. Soon to meet with priest.

 

[T_gunna_21]

I actually didn’t convert to nothing… I grew up catholic but only later in life was born again. When I gave my whole life to Christ, was when I developed a personal relationship. God revealed himself to me through saving grace, and I confessed all my sins to him and for the first time in my life I cried tears of joy… He pearced my heart with his word and opened my eyes and ears… I started walking in the spirit once I realized the Holy Spirit living inside me convicted me of my sins. Then the spirit opened my eyes to this world, my habital sin, and the enemy the devil. I can finally say and realize I was the Shepard"s
lamb all along and I heard is voice. As for church I prayed on It And found that church is the lambs of the Shepard and with that comes responsibility to spread his Word! Lord I am your vessel and I will follow your voice through the Holy Spirit. Christ revealed a new church to me where I can praise his name. Not to get into denominations christ revealed to
Me the separations of Christians because of false doctrine and leadership… I believe the true believers of Christ are the ones who have a personal relationship with him
And not just intellectual. And who can put there pride of denomination to the side and realize christ accepts all and wouldn’t turn no one down if they desire him and not the world … My desires have completely changed I desire christ more than any person thing family… Lord please keep your lambs heart tender in a world full of wolves in Sherpa clothing. It’s all in the heart don’t matter what denomination your in . Give christ your
Heart… Ask jesus himself !!! He is faithful!!’ God bless

 

[GCTSgrad]

I’m not Catholic yet, but getting much closer. If I were to choose a patron saint, I would have to choose either St. Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers or St. Anthony of Padua, who preached to the fish!

I have always had respect for the Catholic Church.
For a long time I have believed in the story of St. Bernadette and Our Lady of Lourdes and the miraculous cures which have taken place there. Corollary: No other group of Christians gives Mary her rightful place.
I went to school with some who were anti-Catholic who later converted.
Now I must make my own decision to convert. I have been attending mass and having talks with a priest. The pastor of the church didn’t think I needed to go to RCIA; I must stress that that was his recommendation and that I am not trying to opt out of the usual way for converts to come into the Church. I certainly don’t think I am too good or know too much to avoid that process.
.