Matt Poole

From my childhood I was Southern Baptist where I was very involved starting in my teenage years. I was involved in youth group activities, bible studies and even played guitar in the youth group band. I was never really anti-Catholic but I knew why we were Protestant.

I enjoyed learning about apologetics and began to dive deeper into the faith as I grew older. There was a youth leader, Chad, who was a mentor to me and he also really enjoyed apologetics. We would go to apologetics events such as William Lane Craig talks and talks by Protestant apologists such as Greg Koukl and others from Stand to Reason.

Chad moved to Texas and messaged me one day telling me he had converted to Catholicism. This came as a massive shock to me because he used to talk about the reasons why we weren’t Catholic and should be Protestant.

This sent me down an eight year journey of studying Catholicism to try and show Chad that he should be Protestant. The first four years I tried to disprove Catholicism and slowly I realized I wasn’t going to be able to prove that Catholicism was false. The next three and a half years were spent thinking that Catholicism was another denomination that you could choose, but I wasn’t convinced that I needed to convert. Over this time, God was convincing my mind.

Over the last few months, God drew my heart to the Eucharist in a very real and profound way. I had been attending a Presbyterian Church for the last six years or so and had never second-guessed receiving communion.

One time they served communion and it was as if I heard Jesus say “I’m offering myself to you body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist at the Catholic Mass. Why do you keep running away from me?” I didn’t receive communion that day and the very next Sunday I started attending the Catholic Church. I came into full communion with the Church two months later.