Raised in a Catholic household, my spiritual life felt a bit more handed down than a lived reality for many years. Although I was familiar with the liturgy and recited the prayers, I had yet to experience the profundity of a personal conviction.

This was my conversion, where the scales fell off of my eyes. I had realized I have been living a life of sin. Recalling it now still amazes me how wonderfully God works. From that moment on I stopped living for the world.

Those next two years transformed my life forever and healed me in places I didn’t know were bleeding. I was so impacted by the richness of living in community that I applied to be an SPO missionary.

During that Mass, I truly felt the presence of Christ in the Church. Unlike anywhere else I had been. Seeing the Eucharist for the first time, the tradition, the veneration, everything about it felt right.

That Good Friday, I wandered back into a church for the first time. In the dark by candlelight the choir sang: O vos omnes, qui transitis per viam: attendite et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus.

I went to Mass for over a year before I converted. Around the same time I attended Methodist, Baptist, and non-denominational churches searching for answers, hoping God would give me peace somewhere other than the Catholic Church.

But the deeper I studied, the more I fell in love with the Church Christ Himself established. And on Easter of 2025, I said “yes” again—this time to His Church—and was confirmed Catholic.