Shayne’s rambling blog

I have already been receiving comments asking me to share my story.  I am not much of a story teller but I am happy to share the what and why of my conversion.  I was born into a “creaster” protestant family, that means we went to church on Christmas and Easter.  My grandmother made sure I got confirmed in our church but other than that I had little to do with Christian fellowship.  I drifted on like this until I was 23 years old when I started searching for something to fill the holes I felt in my soul.  I found Jesus Christ thanks to a friend of mine and after about a year and a half of internal reflection I accepted Jesus as my saviour.  Now that I had a saviour I needed a fellowship that I trusted to help me on my journey.  I bounced from church to church, mostly evangelical and protestant, I still had not found a home.  No one seemed to have what I was looking for.  I learned a lot of good things from the people I did choose to listen to, but there seemed to be too many differences, who was right?  Then I married my wife the “Super-Catholic”.  Things slowly started to change.  I still went from church to church looking for the “right” one, but I started attending mass with my wife more and more.  Then we moved from Chicago back to my hometown in North Dakota, in fact we moved to a house that was about 75 feet from where I was raised.  Growing up in this town in the 70’s and 80’s there were 2 religious groups in my neighborhood, the Catholics and the anti-Catholics.  I remember not belonging to either one when I was young but as a new Christian later in life I was mentored by one of the members of the latter.  Anyway, I was now married to a very devoutly Catholic woman from the Philippines and I was going to the mass at a church I had walked past a million times but never gone into.  My wife was willing to let me continue my search but she always let me know that she wanted me to find a true home some day.  After a short and scary excursion into a study of the mormon faith I pretty much figured I might as well give up and go to mass with my wife and children.  But I wasn’t going to enjoy it.  One day I heard about the priest’s wed. night bible study and I figured it couldn’t hurt to check it out.  After 3 weeks of having Father Dan speak directly to my soul I decided to search for the answers to my questions from Catholic resources.  I thought I would be able to find the answers eventually, but imagine my surprise when I was getting the answers faster than I could comprehend them.  Every time I looked at a website or looked something up in the catechism that Father Dan gave me I was nourishing my soul and mind with the exact information I needed.  The biggest roadblock I had when it came to actually being serious about the Catholic church could be summed up in one word, idolatry.  I had gotten all of my information about this issue from non catholics up to this point.  I was amazed at what I found when I turned to the church for my information, I found THE ANSWER.  Now that I had the information I needed there was no question about the next step.  On Monday Feb. 11, 2008 I made the decision to convert.  I will be taking my first Holy Communion on Holy Saturday, until then I am devoting myself to preparation with study and prayer.  My wife and children are helping me, our priest is educating me and everyone I have talked to at our church is supporting me.  I am home.