Anita
One book and two book evangelists played a special role in my journey into the church. A long time ago, a book evangelist sold my parents - we were Catholic - a volume from People in God's hands. I was nine at the time and had three siblings. We loved the book and often fought over it. When one of my sisters got married, she took it with her. Faith in God was very important to me from an early age. Instead of going to the disco, I liked going to church. When I started working at 15, I had a colleague who was a Jehovah's Witness. He told me about his faith every day. I, on the other hand, regularly dragged my best friend to events organised by the Catholic Church. They always prayed to Mary there. That went against the grain for me. To form my own picture, I bought a Bible and read it a lot.
When I was almost 18, I saw in a dream how my Jehovah's Witness colleague presented me with a book that I was supposed to read. At the same time, he hung a black cloth over my head so that I could see neither to the right nor to the left. I understood this to mean that this was the wrong way. But my Catholic faith also began to crumble after that.
Years later - I was already married and my third child was six months old - I finally went in search of the Church of God. I talked to people from various denominations. First there were the Mormons, later also the New Apostolic Church. Two friendly young Americans from the Mormons gave me lessons twice a week. After about five months, I was supposed to be baptised. I agreed. And so the baptism date was set. I went home that day with a bad feeling.
The week before my christening, I attended a talk about children's books at the local kindergarten. To my delight, I realised that there were also books from Saatkorn Verlag. I still remembered that it was this publishing house that People in God's hands published. And so I asked the speaker, a certain Norbert M., about this book, which I had already searched for in vain in many bookshops. He said he could get it for me.
The next morning I phoned the Mormons and had the baptism postponed. I was then invited to an interview with two friendly gentlemen from Frankfurt. After a few questions about the doctrine, they asked me why I didn't want to be baptised. I said that my inner self was resisting. They immediately stood up, said goodbye and left the room. A little later, I found myself somewhat confused on the stairs outside the meeting room.
The following Tuesday I was visited by Norbert M., the friendly book seller. He wanted to introduce me to some books. But I only wanted to know which church he went to and where he got his basic knowledge on matters of faith from. So I learnt that he was a Seventh-day Adventist and based his beliefs on the Bible. From then on I took Bible lessons with him, and in 2003 I was baptised. It all finally made sense. Especially the thing about changing the 10 commandments had convinced me.
