My Faith Journey - Part 2
In part 1 of my testimony, I had survived college and was living the good life working on a cruise ship and God had answered my prayer in finding a new boss. Here’s the next major stage of my life as God continues to guide me in the right direction, but I stubbornly try to do things my way and listen to “false prophets.”
I ended up working for three years on several cruise ships in various different jobs. Besides hopping to just about every island in the Caribbean, I visited Venezuela, Columbia, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico. Did 3 trans-canal cruises and 2 summers in Alaska out of Vancouver. I also visited Seattle and Long Beach, CA.
After a while, I got tired of living like a gypsy and I wanted to settle down. I knew that I didn’t want to live in Puerto Rico soI decided to move to Miami. A friend of mine from the ship was living there and she was willing to let me stay with her for a few days until I found a place to live.
I also wanted to find a church and start working my way back to God. I stayed a few weeks in Puerto Rico with my parents as I planned my one-way trip to Miami. I started watching Christian TV shows and I started reading the Bible.
Now, we didn’t have a regular Bible in our home — we had one of those huge family Bibles that I think must’ve weighed about 50 pounds. It was the only thing I had so I started reading it. It was a King James in the old English — that was interesting. And I had no idea what I was reading.
So when I moved to Miami I started church shopping. I knew nothing about the different denominations who they followed or believed in. The first church I went to was the one where my landlady went to. I was renting a garage apartment. It was a Baptist church. Now, coming from Catholic background and going to a Baptist church, I was totally lost. It was a huge church and I started going to the singles ministry which met for about an hour before the service started.
Now as a Catholic, I was baptized when I was six months old. The people at that church kept asking me when I was baptized and I said when I was six months old. And they kept saying well, now, you need to be baptized again. But nobody explain to me why I needed to be baptized again. It didn’t make any sense to me.
When I moved to another apartment in North Miami, again I went church shopping and I went to a Church of Christ and they sing without music. Growing up, I always sang in the choir at school and in college, so I knew I wanted to sing in the choir and I played music so I liked music.
One Sunday, I try the church that was three blocks away from my house — it was a United Church of Christ (UCC) and very friendly people welcomed me. Once I sat down, the pastor walked up the aisle and introduced himself. And in talking later with the pastor’s wife, I mentioned I was interested in singing in the choir. She immediately said oh “We rehearse on Thursdays, we’ll pick you up.”
I told her I lived three blocks away I can walk. She insisted, “We’ll pick you up.” She wanted to make sure that I showed up.
So I started singing in the choir, going to Bible study on Sunday mornings before service. We studied the whole the Bible — the Good News Version — which was easier to understand. I felt the Catholic church had deprived me of the true Word of God. I was seeking...
