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My name is Craig Nelson. I have been attending St. George for 5 years. My journey to the Orthodox Faith is maybe unorthodox. I grew up on a farm by Wynyard, Saskatchewan about an hour and forty minutes north of Regina. It is that same farm that I grew up on that I currently live on. Growing up the only time I would ever step foot in a church was for a wedding or a funeral. I lived a rather secular life, but never fully partaking in what the secular world had to offer. Once I went to University, when I was 21, that is when I started to, as I call it, flirt with Christianity.
During the summer of 2020 I began identifying as a Christian, yet not at all understanding what that meant. I had a NIV Bible, my highlighters, and some pretty radical online “Christian” commentators to learn from. I knew of Orthodoxy and Catholicism from studying European History, focusing mostly on Ukrainian and Russian history, but that was very limited and the professors usually disregarded the faith as keeping the people of that time in the darkness until the Enlightenment.
It wasn't until late winter early spring of 2021 that I was brought face to face with the Orthodox faith. At the time I was dating a Romanian girl that lived in Toronto. Going there in early March of 2021, I for the first time stepped foot into an Orthodox Church. I attended a vespers service at St. Johns the Compassionate Mission (their bulletin is usually on our bulletin board). It was here I was bombarded with the smells, the silence, the mystery. This left me thirsting for more. However, I will admit the main reason I came to St. George for the first time was because I was young, dumb, and in love. I thought I could be there for 6 months, get baptized, then marry the girl. Well… obviously that did not happen
Once things ended with this girl, I really just fell into the faith and consumed as much as I could. I will say it was a blessing for me to just accept Orthodoxy, having come from nothing there is no real prior foundation to uproot. Still, my journey was 3 years as a catechumen, driving an hour and half for Mattins, staying till 4 pm during the classes and leaving feeling fulfilled spiritually, but mentally exhausted.
I was baptized on Lazuras Saturday, April 27, 2024 along with 6 other catechumens. Now, 5 years later, I know my place within St. George. I am still slowly opening up to people. I mean after all I am Orthodox, we like to take our time with things. My mom has recently been baptized into the faith, and I am hoping more of my family will further down the line. I have discovered a great peace, but at the same time a great urgency to try and be better than I was the day before. Most of the time I fail, but I tend to look at life as failing upwards. I think Orthodoxy gives me the right tools to accomplish this feat.
