We started dating and decided to go to Las Vegas to help start out a church. Stephan stayed in the Air Force, he just transferred into the reserves and was lucky enough to get stationed out there. We would go out on the Las Vegas old strip on Fremont St and tell people about Jesus. In Christianity if you do not believe in Jesus, you are going to hell which is why were trying to tell people about Jesus since one thing we learned is a Christian who is not concerned about someone leaving Christianity, they might as well not be a Christian at all. It's like watching your brother drown or catch on fire and you in the meantime flip through Cosmo while you see him downing. What would you think of that person? Anyway, We would get a lot of questions from people about Christianity which made us look into it more so we could be better "witnesses" as Christians call it and be more persuasive. Judaism says that ignorance is the most terrible, painful, destructive disease of all. People may even commit suicide out of ignorance. They lose money in the stock market and suddenly feel that life is no longer worth living. What happened? They missed the whole point of what life is all about http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/getting-into-reality/.
My husband was the first to really look into things since he got more questions than I did. The first thing that made him really question Christianity was an article that was written by a Jew that was called, "Why Jews Can't believe in Jesus".http://judaism.about.com/od/judaismbasics/a/Jewish-View-Of-Jesus.htm Stephan read it and decided to see if what the guy was saying was true. After researching he couldn't believe what he was learning. We were following one of the biggest lies created in the world. The more he researched, the more the evidence was piling up against Christianity to the point where it's ridiculously easy to prove false. He brought it up to me only when he was sure it wasn't true because he didn't want me to go through unnecessary heart ache in case he was wrong.
So how did I take it? How would anyone take finding out something you believed so strongly in was a lie? Like a graceful doe of course. I wish that were true. It wasn't an easy thing for me to swallow. It was last news I would have expected from him. The thought of Christianity actually being false was something I would have never expected in my life. I thought I was so sure. I'm inquisitive myself and I would question a lot of things about Christianity. I remember asking one of the Chaplains I worked with in Japan while I was in the Air Force on how do we know if Christianity is true and he referred me to the book, "Evidence for Christianity" by Josh McDowell. I bought the book and read it and thought it was brilliant. The only thing I did wrong was I failed to check and see if what this guy was saying was great evidence for Christianity was true. If it's one thing I've learned from Judaism it's not to just take somebody's word for it without looking into things yourself first. We have a responsibility to find the truth. http://www.dovidgottlieb.com/publications.htm
One of the first things Stephan and I did was tell our pastor and his wife that since we are having doubts, we wanted to take a break from the ministry until we find out for sure whether or not Christianity is really true. I think they were pretty surprised and one thing they said more specifically to my husband (although at the time we weren't married) was, "make sure you know what you are doing because you are taking her along with you".
The Pastor gave us a book that he said would help called, "The case for Christ". We took it and researched and checked the authors claims and this book was even worse than my other book "Evidence for Christianity.” It of course made me sad, and to have to have the realization that we would never be going back the old church. Not only that, but ever since we left, we lost contact with most of our "friends" from the church. No one seemed to care that we weren't there anymore. The next thing that we did which was one of the hardest things for me was tell our friends and families that we weren't Christians anymore, were not celebrating Christmas anymore, and we are currently Noahides. Those are people who believe in Judaism, but are non Jews. http://www.aish.com/w/nj/46804897.html We wrote e-mails since we felt it was the best way to communicate because we can explain all we want without getting interrupted, let the information digest for the other person, and avoid as many rumors as possible.
The responses to our decision varied. Some people didn't really care, some were encouraging, and others tried to convince us that Christianity was true and debate, but realized they didn't know enough. A pastor and a dean of a Christian college were brought in too, but after receiving an initial round of questions also bowed out. In my family, their response was to tell me not write anymore e-mails, and to especially not tell Grandma because she is very much Catholic. I was hurt at the time by their reactions even though I expected nothing less. They are not ones to talk about hard subjects, let alone things that make them question how they live. I've discovered that's the way it is with most people though. Who wants to be told that what they believe is wrong? We were the – go to church every Easter - kind of Catholics. God was never really a subject that came up when I was growing up, except that you couldn't use God's name in vain. As far as including him in everyday applicable life stuff, there was no mention of him.
Telling my parents was not only hard, but letting go of Christmas was even harder oddly enough. It was my favorite holiday growing up. I loved how all of the family was together including my brothers. They are older by like a decade, so I don't get to see them often, but I always loved seeing them when they came by. I loved the fondue dinner we always had, the decorations, the music, and the movies. My mother and I wouldn't be fighting, and my sister and I had our favorite Christmas movies that we always watched together. Those are the kinds of things people think of when it comes to Christmas; music, family, love, presents, and things like eggnog. Being part of a celebration that worships an idol doesn't occur to most people which is understandable. I had to remind myself to make things easier around that time of year of why I don't celebrate it because of the real meaning, and the origins of Christmas. When it comes down to it I don't want to have anything to do with a “holiday” that originated from such falsehood and evil. Other than celebrating the birth of an idol, a few things things that were involved in early Christmas were human sacrifice, widespread intoxication, going from house to house while singing naked, rape and other sexual license, and raping, beating, and otherwise humiliating the local Jews. For more information on the origins of Christmas, you can check out:
http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Christmas_TheRealStory.htm
http://www.history.com/topics/christmas
After jumping those hurdles, the researching for the truth continued. We looked into all of the religions in the world and their evidences for them. Eventually, we found that Judaism was the only one with any real logical evidence, which you can read about at this link:
http://www.dovidgottlieb.com/publications.htm
It took about 2 years of research before we were sure of the truth and decided to convert to Judaism. Lech Lecha http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/3161/jewish/Lech-Lecha-in-a-Nutshell.htmIt wasn't easy either because I didn't always feel like thinking and researching, but I didn't want to take forever since I knew the process of converting to Judaism takes at least a year. So the longer I took to find out the truth, the longer I would take to live it. So I had to set up a time everyday where I would research and think about everything.
It was in June 2010, 3 months after the birth of our first baby boy - Cyrus that my husband came home from work and told me he had some good news and bad news. The good news was that I he gets to help me out more with the baby. The bad news was that he got laid off. The funny thing was I was so happy that I would get more sleep now that he would be at home, I didn't care so much about the fact that he was unemployed. He's a computer programmer and they are needed everywhere, which is another reason I didn't worry so much. Anyway that kicked our plan to convert into fast forward. Stephan started making a spreadsheet(which he does with practically everything) of all of the states with the best Jewish communities and schools for Cyrus, as well as the job market. After much research, the end result was Washington D.C. Stephan got an interview for a computer programming job at GEICO. He flew out there and checked out the area while he had his interview. A few days later, we found out that he got the job, so we started packing.
They say moving is stressful, which is true. Moving with a 3 month old and cats is even more stressful. We were already stressed and nervous about flying with our 3 month old being a new parents and all. If that isn't enough we were also flying our cats out there with us. As we were dropping our cats off on the boarding dock we find out our cats had the wrong kind of bowls for their food and water. They had to be ones that can attach to the cage or they couldn't be boarded. Luckily we arrived early enough to make a quick trip to Walmart.
Now we just had to make it through the flight. After everything we went through this morning, when the flight attendant asked me what I wanted to drink I figured an irish cream drink was in order. To my surprise and delight, I didn't need it. Cyrus handled the flight just fine and so did the cats! We picked them up later and they walked out of their cages as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. We figured they would be meowing like crazy and acting frantic but they were surprisingly calm. Now we could relax, take a breather, and enjoy the fact that we finally made it to D.C. So what happens now? Well that's a whole other blog...
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