FROM FATIMA TO GARABANDAL:

When I started returning to the practice of my Roman Catholic Faith at the age of 29, I really didn't even know how to pray. Why? Because my childhood was one of sickness and near death and I missed out on any Sunday School. I had rheumatic fever and heart trouble and spent many months in different hospitals and convalescent camps, as they called them in those days. So after living a pretty wild life, then getting married and having children, I sort of settled down to working hard to support my family. I started reading the Bible for some reason, which escapes me now, and then returned to going to Mass on Sundays. Little by little, I grew in my faith as I started to pray and learn more about the Holy Faith. One day I went to a Christian Book Store and picked up this book titled "Our Lady of Fatima", written by a man called Walsh. This book knocked me for a loop! For the first time I realized how much supernatural was in believing in Christ and about angels, heaven, hell, and especially about Mother Mary, who has appeared so many times in history to help her Son Jesus save this world and save souls. So now my thrust in life changed and it was no longer "what can God give me" but "what can I give to God!" The answer was, of course, myself! I began offering myself, all my prayers, my deeds, my very life to God through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I started wearing the "Brown Scapular" which Our Lady of Fatima held out to the hundreds of thousands of people on the Day of the Spinning Sun; learned to pray the Rosary as Mary requested of us all, praying the Fatima Prayers taught to the Children of Fatima, in reparation for the sins of the world, and most especially started to attend daily Mass and Communion for the glory of God. Of course all this led me to volunteer in different ministries of the parish I was in, which finally led me to be called, I believe, to the Diaconate, to serve as an ordained minister. So there you have it in a short "nut shell" on how a book had "opened my eyes"!

[To be continued . . .]