How K became a PDX Church Hopper

I grew up going to Presbyterian Church. My fond memories of those days included my father making us shine our shoes before we left, enjoying pink and white animal cookies at Sunday School, and always a trip to Dunkin Donuts for my favorite, chocolate honey glazed! Good times.

My parents broke up when I was thirteen and we did not attend church as a family. When I went to high school, some of my girlfriends went to a church called Trinity Covenant so I started going with them. I have good memories there too, the youth group was really active and we enjoyed campouts, dressing up to go have dinner together, and just generally goofing off as a group. The boys were kinda dorky but nice.

Did not go to church at all when I was in college. Lived overseas for a while then came home and stayed with my mom in Portland. She was attending mostly Black churches in North Portland at the time so I went along with her. They all had really long names, like Alberta Street Filled with the Holy Spirit Church of God in Christ. But the music was PHENOMENAL! And you could not fall asleep, there was too much jumping up and down, fat ladies with fancy hats fanning themselves and yelling out "hallelujah!" all the time. And the BEST fried chicken you ever tasted down in the basement afterwards. It was a lot of fun, but I definitely felt like a foreigner. I mean, my mom and I are tan, but we felt pretty light skinned in that crowd.

Fast forward to about ten years later, I am now married with a two year old son and although I have not been inside a church for years, I knew that it was my duty to get him baptized. But where? Nobody in my family was going to church at the time. My husband had never gone to church in his life. I guess the options were wide open, but that also made it hard to choose.

The deciding factor was that one day my husband announced that he wanted our son to attend Catholic school. What the heck?!! was my first reaction. But he told me that he had lived with a foster family for one year of his life and had attended Regis High School (in Stayton). He said it was a really good experience, and he wanted an education like that for our son. Way to wait until our child is two years old before sharing that important piece of information with me!

I wasn't about to turn my poor son loose in some goofy Catholic school until I learned more about what those Catholics were all about. I didn't know anything about Catholicism, my mom had one friend who was Catholic and that was about it. So I went down to the Catholic church in our neighborhood and said that I wanted to learn more about the Catholic church. Can you believe they signed me up for RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults)?! I had just told them that I wanted to learn more about their church, not that I wanted to become Catholic myself! But after attending the weekly classes, I soon learned that Catholic was not that different than the other churches I went to. In fact, Catholic was like Christian times ten. So I stayed, and got confirmed at the Easter Vigil. I was so grateful that my dad had the good sense to baptize me as a baby, so I didn't have to suffer the full body dunk in front of everybody!!

So, unlike my dear friend T, I CHOSE the Catholic Church and I LOVE it! I have enjoyed so many blessings because of being Catholic and have met so many wonderful faith-filled people. Heck, I met T at the Catholic Church for crying out loud! So when T told me she wanted to explore churches, I said, sure, I'll come along. Even the Pope says that all Christians belong to Jesus, NOT just Catholics. But let me make my position 100% clear - I love the Catholic Church and have no complaints about it at all. My prayer is that this journey will bring my dear friend T right back home and she will see that Catholics are doing it right.