How I became Catholic - Part 1

I just realized that I have never blogged about my journey of becoming a Catholic…. so here I go. I’ll start at the beginning.

I was raised Protestant, going to Mennonite, Pentecostal and Full Gospel Churches. My grandparents on my mother and fathers side were Mennonite, although my mother’s parents eventually left to become part of the Full Gospel Church.

I had never really questioned my faith – I always believed in God, that I was a Christian and that I was meant to live a “good” life (at a young age that just meant not doing anything that would send me to Hell! Haha). In a sense I think that I really had a “blind faith”…I took what I was told at Church at face value and never really did any self-education. I especially never looked into other religions (including other Christian denominations, i.e. Catholicism)– I had this sense that it was wrong to do that, that if I wanted to learn about other religions it meant that was wanting to leave mine, and I didn’t.

I mainly grew up in Abbotsford, but from grade 2 to grade 6 we lived in Fort St. John (in BC, not back east!). When we moved back to Abbotsford, we started attending the Abbotsford Full Gospel Church (was a different name back then), which was pastured by my Uncle. It was a small church, but it was great – my cousin, and best friend, went there, my Aunt and Uncle were there, and my Grandparents were there. Other than sometimes going to a friend’s church on Saturday evenings in grade 12, I kept going to the full gospel church. At one point my mom told me that I didn’t have to go to her church anymore with her, if there was somewhere else I wanted to go…but I didn’t have a car, so I kept going there.

Around that time I started having a few issues with some things, three main issues to be exact. Baptism, Communion and, what I’ll just call “history”.


When I was 13 I decided that it was time for me to be baptized. So I told my Uncle, and Pastor, that the next time there were baptisms, I wanted to be baptized. I don’t remember much about it, but I know that at least for a couple Sundays before I was baptized, my Uncle would have a special Sunday School before church with those of us who were going to be baptized to learn more about what it was all about. I really felt that, as a Christian, I was called to be baptized. It seemed like such an important thing in the Bible, and all of my family members were baptized, so I knew I needed to be. The problem was that I didn’t quite understand it. I just remembered thinking that I felt like it was a much bigger thing than just being dunked under the water…that something else was supposed to happen. Because I didn’t know WHAT I thought was supposed to happen, my questions went unanswered. I went ahead and got baptized, and (I never told anyone this at the time) but I actually felt kind of sad/empty afterwards. Everyone else that got baptized said that they felt so “clean” afterwards, and that they felt “lighter” as they came up out of the water…and I I had the same feeling about communion. I know that as a Christian I was called to receive the “body” and “blood” of Jesus Christ in Communion. It seemed to be such an important thing in the Bible – it was the last thing that Jesus did with his disciples before he was crucified. But I didn’t understand why, at our church, we only received communion on the first Sunday of the month; I felt we should receive it more (and even some churches only have communion 4 times a year). I also didn’t really think that it was EVERYTHING it was meant to be. I continued receiving communion, but it was an empty experience; if this was “just bread”, why bother?

Now for the “history” part – it involves many things to me (I even incorporate authority into this feeling of history). As I said, I was going to a small church that my Uncle was the Pastor of, and he was the first Pastor of that church in Abbotsford. There are other Full Gospel Churches around, but he started this one under the direction of the ACOP (Apostolic Church of Pentecost). I didn’t like that there wasn’t any history behind our particular church. It had only began a few years before we moved back to Abbotsford. I also didn’t like that when I had questions, I didn’t have one source to go to. Of course I had the bible – but I couldn’t make heads or tail of that, especially on important issues. Once I got my driver’s license and more importantly, my own car, I decided to change Churches and see if I could figure things out.

I decided to go back to where it started for my family in Abbotsford – South Abbotsford Mennonite Church.