by Bill Sundstrom and Danielle Wilson
I come from a family which is religious by tradition. We went to mass only on important occasions like Christmas or Easter. During student years I had more and more trouble with religion – I just couldn’t understand it, so I drifted away.
I wasn’t seeking God at all. Then I met my future husband, who’s a Christian. He was “born again” a few years ago, so of course we talked about it a lot. Our conversations made me think, and brought up a lot of questions. But I wanted to make my own way spiritually.
My fiancé is a foreigner and lives in another country, so as I didn’t know any Christians in France, I started searching the Internet to try and find answers to my spiritual questions. Since I travel a lot for work, the Internet was very convenient. But I also wanted to meet some French Christians to talk about all my questions.
That’s how I happened “by chance” to visit the website “atoi2voir.com.” I immediately liked it, with all the different subjects it touches on, and the way they’re approached. When you have prejudices as I had, it helps. And the language is easily accessible. So I wrote to the site to ask if they knew any Christians who could answer my questions.
Someone answered a few days later and gave me the phone number of a pastor of a church near where I live. Shortly after that, the pastor himself contacted me and invited me to come over for a cup of tea and to talk. I went to his church and liked it. I immediately got on well with several people there, and even made a friend.
The pastor told me about the Alpha course that was starting up in a few months. I waited and then went. I enjoyed it. It really fit into the thought process I’d been going through spiritually; it gave me a chance to confront my experience and questions with other people.
During this whole time, maybe even before the Alpha course began, something happened inside me: I became a Christian. My faith is still fragile. I’m still making my way, and I want to keep going. I’ve learned that things happen in their own time; I can’t have all the answers right now.
I can see that God really guided me through the site “atoi2voir,” to lead me where I’m at today.