JOURNEY HOME

Tsh Oxenreider was raised Evangelical, and even felt called to do missionary work, but her desire to grow deeper in her faith began to lead her toward liturgy and the sacraments, which she began exploring through the Anglican tradition. However, she still felt as though God was calling her to deeper roots, and the more she prayed and discerned her way through her questions, the more she felt that the Holy Spirit was leading her to become Catholic.

Phillip Seeberg grew up in a Reformed Jewish household, but stopped attending synagogue after his Bar Mitzvah. In college, he met some Christians who were handing out New Testaments, and he began to read the story of Jesus. Powerfully moved by what he read, he became a Christian, and joined InterVarsity Fellowship, but the divisions between denominations led him to seek the historical roots of the Christian faith, and to find his true spiritual home in the Catholic Church.

Debbie Capen came from a Catholic family, but was not well-formed in her faith. An unplanned pregnancy in college, followed by an abortion, led to a dark turn in her life. Searching for answers, she began to pray the Our Father, the only prayer she remembered from her Catholic childhood. That opened a door for her to make a slow and steady return to the sacraments, beginning with Confession. Debbie now works full time in pro-life ministry, supplying college students in unplanned pregnancies with the resources they need to help them choose life.

Justus Hunter’s dad was a Methodist pastor, and he himself decided to pursue academic study in theology, attending Asbury College and Seminary, where he encountered Church history in a way that made him want to learn more about the world of the early Christians. After getting a doctorate from Southern Methodist University, he went on to teach theology at the seminary level, and it was during this time that all the threads he’d been following regarding history, liturgy, and the sacramental life came together, and he and his family felt led to enter the Catholic Church.

Sr. John Dominic Rasmussen, O.P., grew up in Nashville, and her dad worked in the country music industry. Though not always serious about questions of faith, it was while she was in high school that she felt called to enter the Catholic Church, and began to discern a vocation to religious life. She would go on to help found the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, a teaching order that has also found major success with their recordings of sacred music.

Dr. Brian Duncan graduated high school early and went straight into Baptist ministry training. On fire for Jesus, he was constantly seeking deeper resources to help him teach the faith, which led him to discover the Church Fathers. Teaching from them caused problems in his independent Baptist congregation, so he spent a little time in a Reformed Baptist church, which also didn’t work out. Disillusioned, he sought a house church environment, at which point he realized it was time for him to stop trying to reinvent and reclaim the Christianity of the early Church; and what he'd been trying to rebuild on his own initiative was present in its fulness right in front of him in the Catholic Faith. He has since gone on to found Catholic Fightwear, and work as a martial arts instructor.

Amanda Martin came from a strong Christian background, and her husband became an Episcopalian priest. Not coming from a liturgical or sacramental Christian experience, she experienced significant opposition from family who thought she was making a huge mistake and overcomplicating Christianity with rituals and external piety. She shares some of the ways she prayed and discerned through that process, and how she and her husband eventually moved together toward full communion with the Catholic Church.

Fr. Doug Martin grew up in a Godly United Methodist family, but didn’t start taking a call to ministry seriously until college, where exposure to various Christian traditions led him to research Church history. At that time, he became Episcopalian, and eventually was ordained an Episcopal priest. After realizing the need for a stronger way of understanding of Christian authority, he gravitated toward the Catholic Church, entering itin 2001 as a layman. Several years later, he revisited the idea of his call to ministry, and was ordained a Catholic priest in 2019.

Deacon Lee Ashton was raised Episcopalian, but when he joined the military, he felt a disconnection from that faith tradition, and began to search for a new Christian community. For 27 years, he got involved in Evangelical congregations, having some great experiences with them along the way. However, he began to realize that different churches were preaching differently on different passages, and that caused him to yearn for a deeper and more authoritative interpretation of Scripture. He began to research the Reformation, and what he found in his study of Church history began to surprise him. When Pope Benedict XVI issued Anglicanorum Coetibus, allowing a new pathway for those with Anglican backgrounds to become Catholic, he knew this was his opportunity to come home to the Catholic Church.

Dr. John Bruchalski of Divine Mercy Care and Kerstin Pakka of Project Rachel in the Diocese of Toledo share the stories of how they came from believing in a right to abortion, to having a radical encounter with the forgiveness of Christ that has since empowered each of them to work to build a culture of life and promote access to the kind of care that leads others like themselves to heal from the wounds of abortion.

Deacon Lester Loh came from a Presbyterian family, but by early childhood was already completely tuned out of anything related to faith. Over the years, a couple of his siblings became Catholic, which caught his attention, but he didn’t take it too seriously. He ended up dating ad eventually marrying a Catholic, observing her faith from afar until eventually he began to feel convicted to take the extra step to see what God would do if he opened the door to his heart. He ended up going through RCIA together with his wife’s mom, who also had been on the fringes of Catholicism for years. He joyfully entered the Church, and a few years later, discerned a vocation to the diaconate.

Reza Akhtar was raised Muslim in Canada, but was not particularly observant. At a private elementary school, he became exposed to basic Protestant Christianity, but it was in college that he began to explore it more deeply. He married a Catholic, but wasn’t quite ready to make the full leap into the Church, so he spent a few years in an Anglican congregation, before he felt God calling him home to a full sacramental life as a Catholic.

Taylor Kemp was baptized Catholic, but early in his life, soccer effectively became his religion, taking up not only all his time on Sundays, as well as all his attention and affection. The more success he found, the more inadequate he felt, realizing that he had made himself and his soccer skills the measure of everything. By the time he had become a professional player in the MLS with DC United, he had developed a spiritual hunger that eventually began to be fulfilled when he met his future wife, a Catholic who encouraged him to take a look at the Church he’d left as a kid. Taylor went through RCIA and was confirmed, and is now on fire for his faith, working to to develop faith formation programs with the Augustine Institute.

As the son of a pastor, Luke Nelson grew up surrounded by people of deep faith. Following his own call to ministry, he attended Bible college and served for 25 years in the Wesleyan Church. There were several issues that began to trouble him, but among them was the question of the Lord’s Supper. In his Wesleyan/Methodist tradition, it was considered important, but he couldn’t articulate all the aspects of why that should be the case. Digging deeper into the history and tradition of Holy Communion compelled him to take seriously the case that the Catholic Church made for the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

Dino Remedios grew up nominally Catholic, absorbing much of what he knew about the faith from the Filipino culture he came from. In his teenage years, he began to drift more into relativistic lines of thought, becoming a practical agnostic. Over time, however, he found that the answers offered by materialism were dissatisfying, and through a discovery process that involved philosophy, beauty, and even a Marian conversion, Dino found his way back to the Catholic Church.