I grew up in Delaware in a Black evangelical Christian home to two immigrant parents from Ghana and Togo. At the age of twelve, I had a profound spiritual encounter with God where he met me at the darkest moment of my life, and I just knew he was real. It completely changed me and gave me hope as if a light of warmth permeated my despairing soul and I began to desire to live on fire for God as Christian. I read my whole NIV Bible in a year and I attended youth evangelism Conferences like Dare2Share in high school.
But upon arriving at Duke University, I started to move closer and closer towards the intellectual tradition of the Early Church. I read apologetics literature from minds like Timothy Keller and C.S. Lewis for the first time to combat the critiques on my evangelical upbringing from skeptics. I participated in Anglican-styled “interdenominational” liturgies at the Duke Chapel. I had the opportunity to attend a silent retreat at a Catholic Benedictine monastery; little did I know that more and more breadcrumbs were priming me to be able to eventually receive the fullness of the faith in Catholicism.
After graduating from Duke and working in Durham as a tech professional, I ended up meeting a “Catholic on purpose” on a dating app who started the first Catholic campus ministry at the largest Evangelical university in the world. I asked her why in the world would she willing go through persecution like that for the Catholic faith, instead of just becoming a non-denomational or Baptist Christian like all of the students who were insulting or pitying her for her religion? She simply responded, “Well I wanted to at first, but I looked into the origins of Catholicism and realized it’s all true.”
That led me on a 19-month intellectual journey straight into a desire for the Eucharist, union with the Successor of St. Peter, and the Church that Jesus Christ established upon him. Finally, in 2022, I was fully received into the Catholic Church. And yes now we’re married and have a beautiful daughter.
After four years of formation I just made my permanent profession as a Third Order Secular Franciscan and now run the digital mission called “The Afrociscan” where I create media to welcome and invite folks from the African Diaspora into the fullness of the faith towards eternal life with Jesus Christ and his Body.
I never would have expected to become a Catholic all those years ago at twelve, but back then, Jesus Christ was — past tense. In the Catholic Church, Jesus Christ is. Truly Present.