Upbringing

I was brought up in a Christian family. As such, before becoming a Christian I led a Christian-esq lifestyle. I was from a young age forced into going to Church, it was a big church and I found it very boring, the only fun part was running around it after the service. This was while I lived near London. When I was in my second to last year of Primary school I moved to South Wales.

In South Wales the Church situation didn't improve a lot, the Church was smaller and just about as boring. Though, it must be said that the youth group it ran was interesting and good fun, however, I really didn't learn anything new about Christianity, it was all "be nice to people" as far as I was concerned. Some time around the first half of Secondary school my Parents stopped going to church, awesome, I now had Sunday mornings to play more computer games.

University

It was the summer before going to Portsmouth University, I was talking to my Mother about what clubs and societies I should join. I'd had enough of being labeled a social outcast and was planning on joining a sporting club (though I was also joining a Computing one) and wondered what she suggested. She said to look at all of them and choose from there, she also suggested the Christian Union (CU). Before you see the conversation there are a few things you need to be aware of.
1) I was not gifted in dealing with Ladies
2) I was doing a computing course, hence, few if any Ladies on it
3) I was not in any way religious
4) I was open minded
5) I respect my Mother's opinion
6) It wasn't on my mind at the time, I had however really enjoyed a Church summer camping thing

You should join the Christian Union
Why'd I want to do that? They'll be boring people
Well, they're a group of people that don't smoke or drink, they'll also do cool stuff that you'd enjoy
Hmmm, I'll think about it
There will also be lots of Ladies

Everybody knows that you can't talk to your parents about girlfriends when you're a guy, I don't know what it's like for ladies but my Mum had never mentioned girlfriends or in any way shape or form encouraged me to find one. I wasn't looking for a girlfriend so I sort of forgot about the CU.

First Contact

Having forgotten all about the CU, it came as a surprise to see Sam, Andrew and Lizzie were giving out doughnuts at Langstone. I sat and chatted to them about something that wasn't Christianity (while eating about 5 doughnuts). They were giving out Donuts the next day but I wasn't able to stay and chat as I had lectures, I still made sure to get two doughnuts.

End of the first week, it was a Thursday, specifically the 6th of October. Specifically, my Birthday (though feel free to send me free gifts any time of the year). I'd joined the Christian Union (only because I thought there might be more doughnuts). I'd also joined the Sailing Club and the Computer Gaming club. The computer gaming club never got back to me, I now know it was disbanded or something similar. The sailing club were having a pub crawl and the CU were having a Church crawl, which to go to?

I spent a good 5 minutes weighing up the sides of the equation here.

Pub Crawl		Church Crawl
Alcohol and Maybe Food Ladies Some interesting activities Student Life		Doughnuts Boring people Bible stuff

Wow, suddenly it was rather clear what I should be doing. I went along with the sailing club. I'm rather glad I did because it showed me what I did not want to be doing. I did not want to be sitting in pubs, drinking liquids I don't like, smelling of smoke and generally not fitting in. After looking back I can say that the above "comparison" would look like this.

Pub Crawl		Church Crawl
Alcohol, lots of it Smoke, lots of it People I just don't fit in with		No smoke Friendly people Some Bible teaching (which it turns out isn't that bad) Acceptance

First Months

Within a few weeks I'd made some friends. Sarah, Brierley, Sam and Lorna (she's almost similar to me, just not as cool). I was also going along to the Meetings on Mondays, the first part wasn't overly relevant to me, but, soon I found that I could begin applying the lessons to areas of my life so it was okay. The best parts however were the Pub afterwards and also Sundays.

I can't remember exactly what I did at the pub, but I must have made an impact on some people as I've got a bucket load of friends at the CU. I soon had expanded my circle of friends to include more people than I'd ever been friends with before. The best Monday was when we went to Playzone and I had loads of fun. Not long after that it got better with a Houseparty on the Isle of Wight where we had even more fun.

I'd also started going to Church. There were several reasons for this. At first it was a sense that if I wanted to hang out with the CU I should at least make an effort to go to Church. After getting a free roast dinner I had a second reason, we were often invited over to people's homes to get free Lunch. A third reason arrived as more students (mostly Ladies at that) started to come to Eastney Church. After a while I even had a fourth reason. The Pastor is an excellent speaker in many ways. Firstly, he's good at speaking to a group, secondly, he's very good at explaining the meaning of a passage from the Bible (If you've ever tried to read it you'll know it's not always apparent what it means).

Questions

Around some time not too long after Christmas I was invited to something called the Alpha Course. As far as I was concerned it was a place to get free dinner on Thursday and in return get to ask a load of really hard questions about Christianity (I admit I did spend time trying to come up with really hard ones). Shortly after that the CU started up a similar thing called Christianity Explored. I wasn't overly amazed by the food at Alpha and my group weren't the easiest to ask questions of, for a start they'd failed to answer them very well at all (at least, in my mind).

The idea of Christianity Explored is the same as Alpha. Due to how my lectures worked out, I turned up an hour early (no point in getting the bus back at that time) and at the start of each session simply sat down and talked to first the others as they turned up. Christianity Explored is designed for there to be a ratio of about 4 Non-Christians to a Single Christian. I was more like 4-6 Christians and me. But it was okay, I knew them all, they were nice, there was free food and best of all, they could answer questions!

Logic

I'm a logical person, from a young age the maxim "Don't do anything unless you know why you're doing it" was drilled into me (mostly after I'd done something wrong). As such I now feel uneasy about stuff unless I've got a reason for doing it, on the plus side I can do most things as long as I've got a reason, stuff that "normal" people get nervous about. Owing to this, I wasn't going to become a Christian without solid evidence, however, by the same logic, I wasn't going to not become a Christian if the evidence said that Christianity was the way forwards.

Most testimonies I've heard involve God stepping in and practically tapping people on the shoulder and showing them he's there and wants them to know him. It sort of happened with me, but it took a lot of other stuff first. By the Easter Holidays I was thinking about Christianity a lot, I'd got a lot of things to ponder myself. About halfway through the holiday I had decided that it'd probably be a good idea to become a Christian, but something was holding me back.

Faith and Fellowship

I got back to Uni on a Monday and was still not 100% sure I wanted to become a Christian, times when I was alone and not doing anything much thinking were totally taken up by me deciding what to do. Seeing as I don't do anything without a logical reason, I figured I'd try to get some first-hand proof. I decided to try a prayer, specifically a prayer for food. I asked for a free meal other than Sunday Lunch that weekend. I ended up having five free meals that weekend.

That Wednesday morning I was sitting on the bus next to Brierley, I decided that the worries were illogical and that there was little to nothing to lose by deciding I'd like to become a Christian. I said to Brierley "I'd like to become a Christian". Brierley (thankfully) said fairly quietly that she thought that was very nice. For some reason, when I told this part at CU everybody thought I was having a go at Brierley and trying to make her look bad! Far from it, we were on a bus full of people and I wasn't 100% sure I should become a Christian.

About a week and a half after my choice of what I wanted to do there was a special "edition" of Christianity Explored if you will. It was on a Saturday, I think I might have impressed the people that run it as I'd cancelled doing my World of Arl results and I did those every Saturday, no matter what was happening (except in extreme cases). The day was about Christian Life rather than the reasons to become a Christian. Owing to my activities over the year I did know most of it. However, I did learn some stuff. The crucial part of the day however was when I went over to Lizzie and Jo's house to fix their internet connection (though I did require help from Sam). I talked a little about Christianity there then borrowed a book called "The Heavenly Man".

That Sunday

I had said to Jo and Lizzie that I'd not be reading it this weekend as I had coursework to do for Monday and I'd had very little sleep the last two nights. The way I saw it, if I was awake most of Sunday after an early night it'd be impressive. Before going to bed at 10pm (that's really early for me) I decided to read a few chapters of the book. At 3am on Sunday I'd finished the book, something made me feel compelled to read the rest of the book and I felt that I'd try something. If I fell asleep tomorrow then it'd not really be a problem for me, it was the Lord's day, I felt it was God telling me to carry on reading and so I trusted him to solve the problem of sleep.

So, I woke up at about about 8am as usual, I got up at about 9am as usual, I wasn't feeling overly tired. Considering my total of 4 and a half hours of sleep the night before (takes me about half an hour to get to sleep) and maybe 4-5 the night before, this was mildly handy as I needed to get ready for Church. The look on Jo and Lizzie's faces when I passed the book back to them was excellent. The book is basically about a Man in China who suffers a lot in telling people about God. He also manages to do a fair few things such as survive beatings that'd kill people, survive a 140 day (ish) fast and even walk out of China's most secure prison, after both his legs had been broken.

That day we were invited over to the Hacker's for lunch (Jonathan Hacker is the Pastor). I can't recall exactly what we did that day, though I'm sure it involved the standard set of games and suchlike. That night was the evening service, still, I wasn't feeling overly different, and by different I mean both that I didn't feel "spiritual" in some way and I didn't feel tired. On the way home I walked Lorna and Brierley home, during that walk we discussed about the fact that I logically wanted to be a Christian but Emotionally felt nothing. They basically made clear that it was what you know, not what you feel that defines who I am. Sometime that night I feel I became a Christian.