ngs, but accepted me for who I was and welcomed me into their group. I could not fathom that kind of acceptance at the time. My friends from Catholic school would never let someone else into our group without scrutinizing him/her first. I continued to attend Youth Group every Sunday to see my friends, not to hear about God. I still did not think about what I sang and I simply tuned out the ‘Jesus talks.’ As the year went on, my friends from the Youth Group began to talk to me about God, mostly saying how he had helped them in their lives, but sometimes directly asking me how I felt about Him. I always hated it when they would start with the ‘Jesus talk,’ because I was purely scientific. I had chosen to pursue a career in the medical field years before, and ever since, science had been the focus of my life. Also, I had learned from my friends in Catholic school that it was never cool to talk about Jesus. I tolerated the religious part of our friendship because the social part was so good for me. I never smoked or drank, and these people would never pressure me to do anything of the sort, since they were so in tune with the Lord. These were the first people who agreed with me when I would say that a good time can be had without alcohol or cigarettes. Not even my Catholic school friends believed that. I went out every weekend with my friends and had a blast. We would go out Friday, Saturday, and on Sunday would end up back at Youth Group. After a few months of regularly attending Youth Group, I began to listen to what the leaders spoke to us about, but I still did not buy most of it. These people were not Catholic, they were mostly Protestant, Lutheran, Baptist, and other Christian denominations. Ideas such as ‘being saved,’ and ‘ministering to others’ seemed radical and unnecessary to me. However, some other lessons that were taught made sense, and I began to wonder about Go...
