I spent the first 20 some odd years of my life mostly agnostic. I believed that there was most likely a higher being of some sort, but I never was interested enough to really give it much thought.

But after I got married, my wife wanted to get back into church, she grew up in church, so I went along with it. We started going to a very small Southern Baptist church.

I remember sitting in church with my mind millions of miles away, though catching bits and pieces of sermons. This went on for a little while. But as time went on, I started having co-workers who were church-goers start talking about church, Bible, God and so on, and I remember one of them, who I highly respected, he began to explain to me about sin, and how we need a Savior, and he went through a Baptist formula of salvation. It made sense to me, and I took it to heart, and then not long after I made a profession of faith and got baptized.

I began to read the Bible and had some wonderful Bible discussions. I would listen to radio ministries, and I just soaked up all I could. The more I studied the Bible the more I wanted!

I started to teach Sunday School, and as time went on I got more involved. I eventually became a deacon in the Southern Baptist church. And then I remember feeling like God was calling me to the ministry, as a preacher! OOOOH NO, not me!!

To make a long story not as long, I said yes to the call. And I knew that if I was going to get in the pulpit and preach, I needed to take my studies to another level. I signed up to a Bible Institute, I studied, I preached in the car, at the church when nobody was there, at the house when my wife was gone, etc etc. I felt I was doing God's will, but I assure you that I felt as much as a fish out of water as one could feel. I am not charismatic whatsoever, in fact I am shy and struggle with anxiety.

But I pressed on. Before I knew it I was invited to speak at churches, and was taking on various ministries, as a chaplain, evangelistic groups, Sunday School teacher, small groups, and so on. And I remember the pastor of a church that we were going to asked me if I would preach on a Sunday night while he was out of town. This was it! The call from God had began for real! I preached to a crowd of about 500 that night. It went quite smooth, I felt good!

And then, time went on. I starting suffering depression and insomnia. I was beginning to have a very hard time carrying on my ministries, so I began to let go of them. It caused some to look down upon me because they did not understand what I was going through. I felt like a loser.

I went from being so zealous and so motivated to feeling like I have betrayed fellow Christians, and I felt that I had fallen flat on my face spiritually.

Well, since I had no more ministries to keep me occupied, I had more time on my hands. I got back into Bible study with a freedom to go where my heart led me. I learned Greek, studied Hebrew, Aramaic, and Latin. I began discovering theological territory that I did not have time for before. I ran onto some ancient writings called the Early Church Fathers. I had no idea that such a thing existed. When I began to read writings from men who worked right along side of the Apostles, I soon realized that they were not Southern Baptists! Not even Methodist or Presbyterian. I could not believe it, they were Catholic! Things started changing!

I had often tangled with the dilemma of Authority. Being a Bible only man, I knew in the back of my mind that there was a hard question that I needed to confront. That was this, "If the Bible is the sole authority to my faith, then who had the authority to determine what books were to be in the Bible?" Ouch! With little investigation one will find that it was the Catholic Church that put together the Bible. I learned a lot about the Bible and how it was put together. With all this going on, and other key evidence coming to light, I realized I have stumbled onto something life changing!

With more and more evidence pointing straight at the Catholic Church, I knew that it had to happen, I needed to become a Catholic. I realized that the Church that I read about in the Bible, the very one that the Lord Jesus came down from Heaven and established, is the Catholic Church. This became my call, to come home to the fullness of the Christian Faith. In fact, over time I realized that my whole journey from the beginning when I was sitting in the pew at a little Southern Baptist church and all the ups and downs along the way, this was all to prepare my heart for the final call, that is to become a Catholic! I was puzzled for some time about why I felt called to the ministry to preach in the first place. One day it hit me, God used that experience to train me to dig deep into His Word, and with that He knew that I would come across certain truths that would cause me to see where the Catholic Church filled in those empty spaces that non-Catholic traditions left open, otherwise I would have never known what to look for.

Then, I came into the Church after 3 years of loving it from the outside and knowing that it was my call from God. I am so thankful that God gently took my hand and kept pointing me home to the Catholic Church. Thank you God!