A beginning
Beginning is never easy. Simple, perhaps. Try to sound clever or at least interesting. No, just an introduction and a link to my conversion story. First the link: www.raphael.faithweb.com/conversion.html
Now for the introduction:
I am an Orthodox Christian, Chrismated in Sept. 2001. I attend St Anne Orthodox Church in Oak Ridge TN. Father Stephen Freeman is the Priest. My hierarch is HE Archbishop Dmitri, Diocese of the South, OCA.
My wife and I have been married for nearly 12 years. We have a beautiful 8 year-old daughter named Sophia Grace and a 18 month-old son named Paul Owen. God willing, when he is baptized he will have Saint Paul of Thebes and Saint Hywyn of Aberdaron as patrons.
None of the rest of my family is Orthodox. They are, however, Christians in other denominations.
I graduated from Berea College with a BA, major in Religion and a minor in History.
Man, oh man this is getting dry.
Well, here are a couple of quotes (this is a commonplace book):
“There would be no need for sermons, if our lives were shining; there would be no need for words, if we bore witness with our deeds. There would be no pagans, if we were true Christians.”
-St. John Chrysostom
“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”
–1 Corinthians 13:4-8
[As God is Love (1 John 4:8,16) try reading this and replacing "love" with "God"!]
“The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?”
Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven–not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”
–John 6:52-58
