WI was raised as a Catholic...an altar boy...parochial school ... and did not find the Lord until age 25 some 32 years ago in Amarillo, Texas.I liked being an altar boy...it was challenging to memorize the DominoChristi's and vobiscums....etu spirituo's ... curie elaison...Latin words which yet reveberate through my mind and soul. We used to go to all ofthe little towns around Tucumcari N.Mex...with quaint sounding spanish names... something like espincino or pintacio or whatever. Each had a building (the largest in town)...brown...squarish...steeple and bell and built on anti-room with slanting tin Roof. Elm trees and blowing dirt were the main features of the small villages full of old people. I don't remember Father Hammer saying anything at all though he must have.I was so concerned as to what he would think if I didn't take commumion because I had sinned again and not been to confession yet and surely didn't want to ask him to hear my confession...I used to sneak into church at just the right moment on Saturday for that...and then quickly out again even if I had not finished my 10 Our Fathers and so many Hail Marys...I could finish them on the way home. Once when lighting the candles for a wedding service ( they were the choice assignments which we coveted as the spanish custom was to place a tall stack of dimes on the plate which for some reason went to the altar boys) ...I set the huge flower displays on fire and Father had to put it out ( I was almost sure he used the crucible of holy water) I was a definite pet of Sister Agnes Catherine and strived to please at St Peters School ..this probably had something to do with my being chased home by big kids reported to have knives most every evening at 4 p.m. I became a so-so Catholic...went to University...got married to a Presbyterian who swore to raise our kids (turned out to be six) as Catholics. My wife Carolyn and I were concerned about America in 1967 and decided to join the John Birch Society. The section leader, Jim Hale, an Amarillo dentist, and barely tolerated member of an independent Methodist Church close by, spent many late evenings at our dinner table as we studied the issues. I remember vividly the army film with actual footage of communists who were efficiently minipulating sticks under the fingernails of men and women sitting in school desks...the message was do not get captured... fight at all costs...be alert...do not surrender. We will ever thank God for Jim who brought us the gospel (last I heard, he as with Child Evangelism in Switzerland). We studied warfare in books such as Sun Su Wu, the famous Chinese general. Soon he sneakily begin to show warfare from God's perspective with various studies in the Old Testament. One night as we studied Gideon...he saw his chance...for we were amazed by the techniques of warfare evident in the story of Gideon....pursuit...surprise...all warfare is based on deception...do not have long supply lines...Jim asked 'why do you supppose that God had Gideon only surround the Midianites on three sides when each man looked down upon the sleeping camp with his light and trumpet andready to break his pitcher (to sound as swords unsheathing)? ' The answer was ' so the multitudes would not merely run over the 300 Gideonites, but would go in the fourth direction'. Oh this seems so simple now...but I was greatly impressed and embraced the Bible as the word of God...my new authority in place of any church or man or system...past present or future. Jim gently told us about God's grace instead of our works for salvation and Praise God...husband and wife were saved at the same time...they begin to hunger for the word of God and to thirst for righteousness.