15 years ago, before the afterlife became mainstream fanfare with books and movies about heaven and the like, my journey to understand what has been taught and experienced by Orthodox Christians for the last 2,000 years about life beyond was just beginning.

During my college years (as my friends can attest) I was living a very sinful life away from God. Think of the typical, worldly college experience: that was me. My eternal future didn’t matter because I was enjoying satisfying my present.

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You can listen to me tell the story here:

http://copticmusician.com/Podcasts/OrthodoxAfterlifeBookReleasePodcast.mp3

This is also available on my Orthodox Christian Meets World iTunes PODCAST CHANNEL

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Then one day, on a visit to my mom’s house, as soon as I walked through the door she holds out in front of my face some printed document, about 10 pages long, stapled; when I looked closer I noticed it was all in hand-written Arabic.

“What is this?” I asked.

She enthusiastically explained that this was a copy of what some monk purportedly wrote about his experience dying, seeing the afterlife, and returning again.

My interest was piqued, but I needed to get my bearings and understand why she was so excited, who this was, how this is even possible, and why I should care.

Turns out, this monk was from an ancient Christian monastery in Egypt (and if you don’t know, Christian monasticism is rooted in the monks of the Egyptian desert, and most regard the Egyptian monk St. Anthony as the founder of monasticism some 1600 years ago).

“How do you know this monk? Why do you trust what he wrote? How did you even get this?”

I came to find out that this monk attended Engineering School with my uncle, and was related through his sister’s marriage to a close family friend.

I heard enough to proceed. I felt compelled for some reason to plop a laptop down on the dining room table and, together with my mother, translated the entire story into English.

That moment forever changed my life. Suddenly I gained an eternal perspective on things and felt so foolish for being so unprepared for the afterlife. Nothing has been the same for me ever since.

But my curiosity did not end there. I needed to know more. I needed to find more afterlife experiences, if there were any, and I needed to place this story in the context of Scripture and early Christianity. So I challenged myself: if Orthodox Christianity is true, then any other Orthodox afterlife experiences I come across must be consistent with each other, and they must conform with Scripture, and early Christian teachings.

15 years later, with an endorsement from my diocesan bishop and several others, and after extensive review by Orthodox theologians and scholars, through God’s grace, it is time to finally share what I’ve found.

While the pivotal change of my life was that first experience I read, compiling this book changed me yet again.

You don’t have to be Orthodox or even Christian to read this book (I’ve even included an extensive glossary for that very purpose). Whether you are seeking comfort over the loss of a loved one, or simply desiring to satisfy your curiosity about the unknown, here are just a few of things you can expect from reading Orthodox Afterlife:

• What is death and what does it feel like to die?

• What will our spirits look like?

• What will we see immediately after death?

• What is the experience after death? Is it a journey, or do we directly find ourselves in some other place?

• What is Hades like? Is it really a fiery torment? Is everyone punished the same?

• What is Paradise like? How does it look? What does it feel like being there?

• What happens to infants after they die?

• Will we see God in heaven? Will we see the Father? The Son? The Holy Spirit?

• What will we do in the afterlife? Will it be enjoyable?

The book is available for preorder from STM Abbey Press (the official publishing arm of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern U.S.A.).

For more info or to preorder, please visit:

OrthodoxAfterlife.com

Please share the news with others. My goal is that this book might do for you or someone else what it has done for me, and more. If one story changed my life, hopefully the dozens of experiences in this book have an even greater impact.

Here I continue the second and final part of relaying Francella Brown’s conversion story, from a life lived away from God, to one that was closer to Him and developed further in her joining the Coptic Orthodox Church. For part one, please click here.

Here is part two of her story:   

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For the audio upon which the following post is based, you can listen here:

http://copticmusician.com/Podcasts/Orthodox_Conversion_Stories-Franny-Part_2_of_2.mp3

*Forgive the sound quality of the recording as it was recorded during a long car ride.

I’ve also created a Podcast channel which will allow you to subscribe to this and any other future audio feeds from my blog in the future:

Orthodox Christian Meets World iTunes PODCAST CHANNEL

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Before embarking on the remainder of Franny’s story though, she would like to provide this preface:

Just as a follow-up to Part 1, and a bridge to Part 2, I’d like to emphasize that my former church (the Pentecostal Church) loved me and took me in at the beginning of my walk.  Without a doubt, it was where God lead me first.  It was there that my personal relationship with the Lord, as well as my love for Scripture, was fostered and nurtured.  And in the end, the offense was mine. They took me in and made me family, and I certainly did not behave like family when I left and didn’t mention where I had gone or when I’d be back.  I asked for their forgiveness because it was I who hurt them and it was just unfortunate that the wound was too deep for us to carry on as a family.  I pray no one uses my experience as an excuse to bash another denomination.  I am not a fan of that behavior at all.  My testimony is just my personal experience and has no bearing on anyone else’s experience or any other church. So, without further ado, let’s get on to Part 2 of God’s testimony.  May all the glory go to Him.  May He increase and I decrease.

Franny the catechumen

Franny embarked on her journey to learn about the Coptic Orthodox Church, as a catechumen. She attended a 2-hour weekly meeting held after the Divine Liturgy that was geared specifically for people such as herself, although it was open to all who were interested in learning there. It offered a manner of “easing in” through Scripture, rather than (or in addition to) the Liturgy which is often difficult for newcomers to Orthodoxy.

That meeting helped open Franny’s eyes to how the Liturgy is a reflection of Scripture.

I would see that the Liturgy is the gospel, because whatever we would pray, I would be like, “That is from the Bible….”

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Things would keep jumping out at me all the time, because I am coming from a Protestant background—Bible-believing [only]—Sola Scriptura. I was coming from the mentality that, if it is not from the Bible then it can’t be Christian, because that is what I was taught. [Therefore] being in the Liturgy it helped that we are literally praying the Scriptures.

Franny also attended catechumen classes that lasted about 6 or 7weeks, giving the basics of Orthodoxy: theology, hymnology, etc. “I loved what I heard.”

About a year after making her decision to attend solely the Coptic Orthodox Church, in October 2010, Franny was baptized.

Leading up to baptism: love

Franny’s desire for baptism began with first feeling loved by the congregation, and a sense of true communion and fellowship, and then later seeking to be formally immersed (pun intended) as a member of the Church, culminating in the pinnacle means of communion—partaking with everyone else in the one body and blood of Christ:

Being in the congregation, I was accepted as if I was baptized. I was brought into the flock. I was in ministry. I was loved as if I was born in the Church. Because of that, my desire was to be baptized because all that was missing was that one final thing, which is communion. I would come to church and could not go into that line to take communion. And at the time, it was not about the theological truth about communion (that this is God’s body and this is God’s blood, and apart from Him you have no life), but it was that I was in communion and fellowship with all these people in every other way except for the Eucharist.

I was loved in every aspect and in every way except for this one thing which was the only thing I could make a decision on by myself.  I was sitting there and thinking, “Why am I not in this line with them? With my family?” It’s almost as if this is your family that loves you, that you love absolutely, [but] never sit down with at dinner, in the most intimate setting. Why?

So I went up to Abouna Pishoy and said: “I want to be all in, because no one has kept anything back from me here. Everyone has loved me completely—loved me first! So I want to be all in, to fully experience this love.”

Most difficult Orthodox belief/practice to get accustomed to?

When asked what the most difficult Orthodox belief or practice she had to get accustomed to was, she immediately exclaimed: “Veneration of the Saints!” That is hardly surprising, since the Protestant tradition protests nearly anything that is heavily associated with the Catholic Church. And that’s exactly what she learned growing up:

I was taught you do not do that. I heard Catholics worship St. Mary … but that she is just a person, she’s nothing spectacular. And [I was] taught that they worship [saints]. (Though veneration and worship are two different things).  So [I was] taught to be the complete opposite—as in, completely disregard them.  So veneration of the saints and the highest veneration being that of St. Mary was the hardest thing. I found that in the (Coptic) church people would talk so much about the saints, I’d be like: “Does anyone talk about Jesus?” Being from a Protestant background, you don’t highlight anybody but Christ… You don’t talk about anyone more than Christ. And all I would hear is talk about saints, saints, saints, and I would be like, “Are you worshiping them? They’re just people, I don’t understand.”

… When people said they had relationships with the saints I didn’t believe it because I hadn’t experienced that. Eventually I came back across the Scripture where St. Paul talks about that “great cloud of witnesses,” and that clicked for me one day.

As Franny prepared for baptism, she realized that for some beliefs that were so contrary to her formal understanding, such as the veneration of saints, she would simply assent to the Church’s teachings albeit without full comprehension. Only later would Franny gain sufficient experience to recognize its value:

I accepted that this is what the Church does but I was not fully immersed in this practice. I became accepting of it and overcame it when I started having a relationship with the saints myself. It’s one thing for it to be head-knowledge, …[but] for me, it had to be an experience. I began to experience a relationship slowly with St. Mary, who is first, and then with St. Verena…. [These relationships] came after my baptism.

How did Franny handle the Midnight Praises and the extensive veneration of St. Mary found there?

One of the Church’s main functions is to teach, and much of this teaching happens through its worship services. This catechetical aspect of the Church is exactly what Franny needed to transition from merely acknowledging that the veneration of saints is the Church’s practice, to personally ascribing to the belief. Cradle orthodox may not appreciate how effective the Church has been in teaching them, not simply through sermons and books, but by the very words they repeatedly hear during worship. For Franny, this was crucial to her progress:

I asked a lot of questions. “Why, in Midnight Praises … do we speak so much about St. Mary and why does it say that she is the consolation of … etc; or [the] whatever of Moses, etc….” And slowly after a while, in Tasbeha (i.e., [Midnight] Praises) it really helped when they talk about the rod of Aaron and how that was a symbol of St. Mary’s virginity, and they talk about the Ark of the Covenant or the burning bush and how she had Christ in her and it did not consume her.

After baptism I began to appreciate [veneration of saints.] It took a while, but there had to be acceptance first even though I didn’t understand it and had not personally experienced it. I couldn’t deny that this was where God had led me, so I [prayed]: “Father, even though I don’t understand it yet, I can’t deny what You’ve shown me and how this is clearly where I’m supposed to be, so give me understanding.”

What would you say to someone who is struggling with the same issue regarding the veneration of the Saints? What would you tell someone else who comes from a Protestant background?

It has been said that those things which we believe because of knowledge are much easier to change than those beliefs which we are more so attached to emotionally. However, Franny did not let her upbringing, and her heartfelt association with Protestant teaching, distract her from her focus on coming closer to God.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t difficult. Yet she recognized God’s merciful, patient and gentle approach in transitioning her mindset from her former understanding to Orthodox teaching.

It has been a continuous learning of Orthodoxy, and replacing some of what I already know (if it’s incorrect or partial truth), with truth. So it’s not like, “Wipe everything you know and start all over again.” No. God is very merciful and sweet, and patient, as a counselor is with their patient. What someone knows, whether good or bad, is their support, their safety net, their belief system. You don’t take away someone’s belief system without gently and loving replacing it with something else.  That is how my learning process has been.

Instead of rejecting outright those beliefs that were contrary to what she had been accustomed to, she opened her heart to God and sought that He overcome her faulty or incomplete understanding, in spite of herself. Here is her advice to anyone who comes from a Protestant background seeking to know God through Orthodoxy:

I would say, based on my personal experience, ask the Lord to open your eyes, because no one can do it but Him. Sometimes head knowledge isn’t enough because somebody can give you another incredible theological answer that contradicts the truth and it can sound true, and that is what I heard before I came to the Orthodox Church. For example, I was convinced that you don’t have to go to a priest to confess your sins, even though the Scriptures say “confess your sins to one another.”  [After delving into] the history of the Church—because not everything is in the Scriptures—[you find] that confession, when the church was young, was public and that because the Church grew big, confession became between you and your spiritual father.

These things I didn’t understand at first, but … I kept praying to the Lord, “I believe something else, God, but I have to admit that I know nothing.” One has to first admit that they know nothing. If you hold onto, “What I know is right, what I know is right,” then even the Lord can’t do anything for you because you are not humbling yourself before Him. There is no room for God’s revelation and transformation in that kind of prayer/thinking. [Rather, it’s good to pray], “Lord, either confirm what I know, or change it to be the truth.”

Franny’s fondness of the Church Fathers

The Book of Proverbs teaches, “Do not be wise in your own eyes.” Franny wholeheartedly understood the need to turn to the Church for instruction, and soon gained not only an appreciation for the Church Fathers, but also a profound adoration of what they have to offer. For the most part, she was discovering them for the first time:

Since baptism, it has been constant learning, constant reading of the Church Fathers.

Upon her mentioning the Church Fathers she exclaimed the magnitude of her adoration for them and what they have to offer]—”Huge! Huge!”

I remember when I first read … “On the Incarnation” by St. Athanasius, and it was as if I never knew anything about Christianity [before that]… My Bible was different after I read “On the Incarnation.” [In] the edition that I had, there was a foreword by C.S. Lewis—big in Christianity, everyone loves C.S. Lewis [Protestants included]. And C.S. Lewis talks about how the Church Fathers are the foundation of our faith. He talked about how nowadays, so many people want to read a synopsis that someone else writes of the original. But Lewis protested why anyone would want to do that when the original has been tried and tested from the beginning and has stood the test of time. C.S. Lewis said this.

He also said, “My work has not been tried and tested. To this day you don’t know if it’s going to be [through] testing in the fires centuries later proven true…. If I had to tell you which ones to read, the new or the old (even though I’m a writer of the new), I would say pass up mine and read the old.” And that was his foreword. And [then] I read [On the Incarnation] and I was enlightened. And since then I was hooked on reading the Church Fathers. Personally, I’m satisfied. These writings are full of truth, and riches. (I also like modern writings that explain Orthodoxy as well).

What do you say to those within the Coptic Orthodox Church who seek fulfillment outside of the Orthodox Church, particularly from Protestant sources?

While Franny, as have many, left Protestantism to join Orthodoxy, there are many cradle Orthodox who move in the opposite direction, to the point of even forsaking the Orthodox Church entirely. Franny, in her typical gentle manner, gives her opinion regarding seeking fulfillment outside of the Orthodox Church:

I do not criticize, because I don’t know what a person’s walk is. I also don’t criticize because God is not limited to where He will meet someone where their heart decides to be open. [I must reemphasize how God very clearly lead me to the Pentecostal church first before the Orthodox Church. In His wisdom He did this because it was good for me.  And what I gained from there, and left with, was a very solid foundation of a love for the Scriptures and a deep personal relationship with my Lord. And I will forever be indebted to my former church family for that]. Where God is leading you, let Him lead you.

What I do say is, what I’ve noticed, (because I have friends who are going through this), is [sometimes] it is rooted from something very personal. One thing I notice is that perhaps, if you are born in the Orthodox Church, [it may not be second nature to ask] a lot of questions and therefore [there might not be a lot of] understanding for why we do what we do.  That can result in things feeling kind of dry, like there’s not a lot of spirit and life; it’s not energetic.  [Maybe it’s] because [we] don’t have the proper understanding or knowledge.

If you’re going from one place to another, it’s because you are seeking, which is good. Just always keep your mind open to truth and always ask the Lord to lead you to truth. Always put away the notion that you know everything. And if you are leaving out of resentment or anger, then recognize that that is what is driving you away, and not necessarily the fact that this church is not fulfilling. I say ‘not necessarily’ cause everyone’s journey is different and in the end, all I know is my own journey.

But, always look for the root cause of what you are doing and why you are doing it. Sometimes people have been hurt where they were born and raised, so they go somewhere else to find healing.  Whatever is happening on the surface, there’s something deeper below what is going on. And if somebody can help you get to that, then that’s where the healing is going to start.

But for me personally, I love my Orthodox Church because this is where the Lord has lead me; this is the Church that Christ left His disciples, and this is what the disciples brought to the ends of the earth, and this is what has been established from the beginning. And I was never able to say that before because I always took it personally that someone would say that about a church that wasn’t mine.  I’d ask, “How do you know?” But I’ve read it! It’s history! It’s right there. It’s not like it’s a feeling, this is a fact.

Don’t run away from the riches of what God has established for you because someone else has spoiled it for you.

If you need to find healing, find healing, but consider perhaps not leaving the riches of what God has given you because someone else has tainted it and made it taste bitter for you in some way, shape, or form. Find healing with that relationship or with that bitterness, but what God has left for you, don’t deny yourself of [it].  It is His gift to you, His child.  What God has given us from the beginning is everything that we need.

Christ did not come to separate people from religion, but to bring together all of His sheep

Today, we find many who want to disassociate the Church from Christ. People who feel this way often are reacting to some negative sentiments they have developed about the Church—the decisions and/or actions by people who make up the Church, from the highest ranks of its authority all the way down. Many will point to some disgruntlement they have over something that Christ’s sheep did, and then decide to leave the flock in an attempt to just join Christ while leaving the Church behind. Yet Christ said that he wants there to be “one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:15).

In her remarks about the desire of some to leave the Church, Franny perceptively points out how Christ handled the Jewish religion in spite of its deficient leaders and members:

It reminds me a lot of when Christ came, and the children of Israel strayed because of either the false teachings of the Pharisees and the Sadducees or because of captivity, war, idolatry, etc. Sometimes those who were leaders over God’s church committed mistakes, and because of that you had a lot of lost sheep. You had the Samaritans who were descendants of the Jews but strayed and worshiped idols. There were so many different routes that God’s people went, and the Lord came to gather the sheep, not to separate them; His intention was not for them to leave and start something different. He specifically said, “Do as the Pharisees say.” Why? “Because they hold the law of Moses. As for their hypocrisy, I will deal with. But they hold the truth. So do what it is that they say to do.” The Lord never said, “Leave.” There were a lot of problems with the house of Israel, with the Jewish religion, but He said I’ve come to gather you back.

Did Christians leave the house of Israel to start a new religion?  No. They were pushed out because they were followers of “The Way.” The Jews who didn’t want to accept Christ pushed them out. But God’s message is never “leave.” He said: “This is what I established for you from the beginning, and I will come and deal with all of the problems and the reasons for why my sheep have been scattered, but my intention is to gather you back as one bride, not to scatter you.”

The Coptic Language: a stumbling block?

One of the most prevalent concerns among those seeking to make the Coptic Church more inviting to converts has to do with the languages used during the service, particularly the Coptic language.

Franny was asked whether the Coptic language was an impediment to her conversion:

It wasn’t because the parish that I started out in, St. Maurice and St. Verena, used only English, because it was the one common language of everyone, and because of that it wasn’t a stumbling block. We only used a few phrases in Coptic or Greek.

What role should the Coptic language have in the Coptic Church… should it be eradicated?

While Franny was accommodated with a nearly all-English liturgy in the Coptic parish she first joined, she does not regard Coptic as something that should be eradicated, recognizing its historical significance for the Copts. For her, there is a happy medium that rests on determining what is the wisest and most edifying way to accommodate the congregation:

I don’t think [Coptic] should be eradicated. I do believe we should use wisdom, because I always look at the model of the day of Pentecost, and it was very important, clearly to God, that every person pray in their own language in order for them to have understanding. Otherwise, what are you saying? What is the point of praying if there’s no understanding. I believe that we do need to use wisdom in terms of who is in our congregation so that each person can pray with understanding.

This is however the Coptic Orthodox Church and it is part of the history and to keep that identity I don’t see anything wrong with that at all.

Franny points out what she regards as traversing wisdom—turning the Coptic language (or anything) into an idol, set above Christ:

[Keeping the Coptic language is alright] as long as we don’t hold onto it to the point that it becomes an idol. Anything in the Church … that is a stumbling block to others but we are not willing to remove it in order for someone to get closer to Christ, at that point of time we’ve done what they did in the New Testament when the Judaizers said: “You have to be circumcised in order to be Christian,” and then St. Paul [clarified that he] didn’t teach this at all. Then they had to gather together the council in order to determine, what is the goal here? The goal here is that people understand the love and the grace of Christ and they live a repentant life and they be transformed. Therefore there were certain things that were not required for salvation.

As for these things that are not required for salvation—if it is a stumbling block in any way, shape, or form to anyone with a weaker or lesser faith, then khalas get rid of it. I think we just need to use wisdom. All things are beautiful as long as it is edifying. All things are beautiful, as long as they are a means to an end. Jesus always has to be the end. Everything else must be the means. If something (or someone, other than God) is an end for you, rather than a means, then we have created an idol. And we count all things as loss and rubbish in comparison to knowing Christ Jesus.

Having visited the convent of St. Mary & St. Demiana in the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern U.S.A., what is your experience having done so and what do you like about it?

Franny’s journey is a testament to the depth and riches of Orthodoxy. Before she joined the Orthodox Church, her heart was deeply devoted to Christ. It would have been hard to imagine how much deeper her devotion could go. But when she joined Orthodoxy, remarkably she found that she had only begun to embark on the spiritual riches of Christianity.

Franny recently visited the convent of St. Mary & St. Demiana in the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern U.S.A. Some cradle Orthodox would prefer never visiting such a place because they hardly find it appealing. Franny, on the other hand, went out of her way, traveling from Canada, all the way down to Georgia. Here is what Franny found captivating about the convent:

In the exact same way that the Lord prepared me to come to the Orthodox Church by putting certain types of worship within me before I saw it happening, the same thing has been happening with me when it comes to visiting the convent. For me personally, I’m hungry for God. This is what God has given me, and not something of myself. Constant prayer is what satisfies me—“Seven times a day I will praise Your name.”

Another thing that God has put in me is that my heart breaks for the world that doesn’t know Christ. It’s heart-breaking. I see some of my family members as icons of the world who don’t know Christ. So when the monks and the nuns get up at four o’clock in the morning to pray for the world, they genuinely do. So, I can’t go out and preach the gospel to the world and I can’t make everyone accept Christ, but the only place that I feel I can make a difference is by praying for everyone, and praying for God to please have mercy and to give us all one more day to repent before He comes.

I like silence. Within the last couple of years before I’ve visited the convent for the first time, I find everything has become noise. I don’t listen to music at all. I don’t watch TV or television shows…. I only watch Orthodox saint movies. Everything else is just noise because I can’t hear Him, and I think I’ve always just loved silence. That’s why I would always go and travel by myself, because I can’t hear Him in the constant noise and bustle of the world. We don’t still ourselves to hear that still small voice. God’s voice is not always in the wind, it’s not always in the earthquake, it’s not always in a great fire; it’s in a still small voice. And this is what they practice in the convent. Idle hands make for the devil’s work, and this is true, and monastics are constantly working so that they don’t get overwhelmed by thoughts. They are constantly praying so as not to get overwhelmed by the passions inside that are constantly trying to drive us away from holiness, and also at the convent serving others and putting yourself last and being obedient, this is the spirit of being a Christian, and you practice that at the convent every single day.

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Glory be to God forever. Amen.

Recently, through a mutual acquaintance (Fr. Anthony Messeh), I was introduced to Francella Brown when she planned a trip to Atlanta to visit the St. Mary & St. Demiana Convent. In spite of a very short time knowing her, it’s hard not to immediately embrace her infectious personality, and I regard her as a very dear friend. Of course, after confirming she was a convert to Orthodoxy, I had to ask her about her background and what led her to wanting to come visit a Coptic convent. With her permission, I recorded her inspirational story so that I may share it with others, for the glory of God. I’m providing her story as a recorded podcast, as well as in written blog posts, in two parts.

Here is part one of her story:    

For the audio upon which the following post is based, you can listen here:

*Forgive the sound quality of the recording as it was recorded during a long car ride.

I’ve also created a Podcast channel which will allow you to subscribe to this and any other future audio feeds from my blog in the future: Orthodox Christian Meets World iTunes PODCAST CHANNEL

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Francella Brown, or as her friends call her, “Franny,” of Jamaican and Cuban descent, was born in Canada and raised in a Baptist church. Her family life was filled with much turmoil: parents’ divorce, along with sibling discord and disunity to the point of completely severing communication among many of them. By the age of 9, everyone, including Franny, had stopped going to church and everyone began to seek their own satisfaction in the world.

Life in the world, away from God

Franny was no exception. Partying, clubbing, drinking, unhealthy friendships, and physical relations were sought after to fill the emptiness she felt inside.

I was seeking relationships with men, who quite frankly didn’t care about me, and in the back of my mind I knew they didn’t, but I would try and convince myself that, “no, no, no, I can get what my friends have, which is love,” but because I didn’t care about myself, that reflected the quality of relationships I was going towards. And they could see that I didn’t care about myself. They used me and I tried to pretend that I wasn’t being used, but deep down inside I knew it.

Like the Samaritan woman, traditionally regarded as bearing the name “Photini,” Franny sought after men rather than God. In fact, the story of the Samaritan woman is so dear to her that Franny usually introduces herself with that name—which she took during her baptism in the Coptic Orthodox Church. She elaborates on why she loves Photini’s story:

It’s my story. She was always looking for love. She is not a bad person. No one is. Everyone is looking in the wrong places for the same thing. She went from person to person, from man to man to man, looking for what cannot be fulfilled and satisfied in her by anyone but God.

It was very significant that the Lord said to her that “You have had five husbands and the one whom you have now is not even your husband”—six—and six is an incomplete number. And then she meets the seventh one, Jesus, by the well, and He becomes her everything, and seven is the number of completion in the Bible. And that was it. Her search was done. She stopped searching and started to tell the world about who this is.

She went back to the people who condemned her in her own society and she said, “Come and see the man who told me everything I have ever done. Could He be the Messiah?”

[The people were astonished, thinking] “He knows everything you did and He still accepts you? Because we know everything you did and we don’t accept you.” It goes to show how much she was redeemed, and that the Lord did not cast her away, but He redeemed her.

30 years old—The Turning Point

At 30 years old, she hit rock bottom, feeling absolutely worthless. Nonetheless, she was committed to living her reckless lifestyle. She was convinced that she would either find happiness or die trying; whichever came to her first, she did not really care. “There was no value for life,” Franny reminisces, “because it wasn’t life as far as I’m concerned. It was just surviving.”

She knew God was there but, admittedly, tuned Him out. In moments of sadness God would come to her mind, but although she knew He was present, she did not know why He would care about her.

A lot of times the way we feel about ourselves, if we do not know who God is properly, if we don’t know God’s word, if we don’t know who He is from the teachings of the Fathers that date back to the apostles…. If we don’t know the truth, then we take what we feel about ourselves and project that onto God and say that must be how He feels about me. Or if we have a bad relationship with a parental figure and we are thinking God is a parent, then the way my relationship is with this parental figure must be the way my relationship with God is going to be. And then we end up shutting the door. I figured that God wouldn’t love me because I don’t love me and didn’t feel my family really loved me. I knew He was there but why would I go to Him, and what would I say? And you feel a lot of shame for the way you are living your life.

As Franny’s 30th birthday approached, she wanted to do something “epic,” as she called it, to overshadow her feeling of inadequacy as compared with how far many of her friends had progressed in terms of marriage and children. One friend had just returned from a honeymoon and described various countries they visited during their trip to Europe, and one country stuck out the most: France.

So, not knowing much French, she went to Paris by herself, where suddenly she felt alone. She arrived at her hotel and did not know where to go or what to do. Each day she would venture out a little further from her hotel than the day before. Not knowing anyone, not speaking to anyone, the world somehow was silenced and Franny was left with confronting God in herself. One day she came across a beautiful Catholic church and decided to walk in. While inside, she says:

I couldn’t help but come face-to-face with Him. “Lord, I am in your house, but I still feel that this is just a building. But it’s not a building. It’s Your house. Let me feel Your presence. Please let me feel Your presence.”

And I did.

I was so overcome by it. I ended up sitting down right where I was standing and I just started crying, and the tears kept flowing and flowing. It was a very cleansing “I’m done running” cry.

That single moment, where the chaotic world slowed down, and God’s presence flooded her being, Franny changed. She left asking God to change her life. She returned for mass on Sunday. For the rest of the trip she felt as if God kept speaking to her, asking, “Are you done running from me? Are you ready to talk to me now?”

Because I’m in a city by myself that is completely foreign to me, and I don’t speak the language, and I don’t have any people with me to talk and drown out God’s voice, and I’m walking around essentially in silence, that was why I was able to hear Him. And I said, “Yeah, I’m ready to come back to You. I can’t do this anymore.”

She felt God wanted to know how far Franny would go to change her life, and her heart exclaimed that she would do anything. And one word kept resounding inside her head: “Obey.” Unfamiliar with her Bible, she didn’t know that obedience is so fundamental to one’s walk with God.

Change begins

Franny returned to Canada and went back to life as usual, mostly. People, music, TV, bad relationships, etc., stayed the same; but when she was alone at home, she would converse with God. She found a Bible in her house and decided to read the gospel of John, and she fell in love with it. She continued to immerse herself in Scripture and continued to be moved by everything she was reading, and God’s love she was experiencing. She joined a semi-clandestine Bible study at work. And then, as would normally happen during her nighttime quiet times with God, she felt God was compelling her toward something: this time, she felt compelled to find and join a church.

One year after her trip to Paris, she joined a Pentecostal (Protestant) church.

She began to leave her old relationships, and delved into knowing God through Scripture and prayer.

Orthodox prayer practices before any familiarity with Orthodoxy at all

There were several practices Franny began to introduce into her prayer life that unbeknown to her were features of Orthodox Christian worship and spiritual life. No one had taught her these things:

One of the things is, when I was sitting and reading my Bible, I would feel the need to take a towel or a scarf or a sheet and cover my head, because I felt God’s presence was so strong, and I felt I needed something to cover me … to show that, “In front of You who am I? I am so small.”

There was another thing that I started to do. I would sit and I would read the psalms. I was like, “These are songs. These are not poems that are supposed to be spoken.” So I would start to try and put a tune to the psalms. I would just try and make up a tune…. So I would make up a tune. It probably sounded horrible, but it felt good to do that.

And then, when I would be on my knees and I would be praying, I would bow down and put my forehead to the ground, just in reverence of God, to get as low as I could before Him…. I remember asking some of the people at my Bible study, at my church, “Do you do this,” and they were like, “No, that’s not something that we feel driven to do,” but I remember one guy said, “It sounds like the Holy Spirit is leading you in worship, so go ahead and do it… It sounds like you are honoring God.”

I would take retreats with the Lord. I would take a week off of work and go somewhere. It was always better if I could travel at least several hours away and get to an environment by myself and sit and be with him for a week, and pray and fast.

Sharing God’s Love, and an important locale to remember: Nathan Phillips Square

Franny was so overwhelmed with God’s presence that she wanted to share God’s love with others. On her own initiative, without anyone knowing, she would go downtown and look for homeless people on the street to express love for.

I just had to talk with them. I had to shake their hands, let them know they had an identity. People walk past [them] and pretend [they’re] not there…. A lot of times homeless might ask for [money] but they are actually asking for something else. At the end of the day people are always asking for something else, but there is a means to get to that…

Franny would buy them lunch, and would just speak with them and assure them they are loved and not forgotten. In spite of “hundreds of people a day that pass by you and ignore you,” Franny would say, “God knows exactly who you are. He knows the number of hairs that are on your head and that number changes constantly. He would not let two sparrows fall without knowing. How much more do you think He loves you? You are His child, and are made in His image.”

On one occasion, in Nathan Phillips Square, an urban Plaza in downtown Toronto, she saw a homeless man who was passed out with a bottle of alcohol next to him, and she felt overwhelmed. She sat on a nearby concrete bench and told God how she felt, that as one person she is not really impacting anyone to change. “I am one person. I have no one to do this with. My heart and my desire to do change is bigger than my capacity.” With a heavy heart, she prayed and asked that God would clothe everyone, feed everyone, and also send her someone to help her in this service. As soon as she concluded the prayer with “Amen,” a remarkable gust of wind blew which nearly lifted her off of the concrete bench, which she took to as a sign from God that He heard her. 

First step getting to know the Coptic Church: how one person changed her life, again

At one point in time, Franny and some friends planned a camping trip. Around that time Franny kept feeling like the Lord was speaking to her the word “Daniel,” over and over again. She thought God was leading her to read the Book of Daniel. This was not an uncommon situation, where she would feel led to read something, and she would search through her Bible and feel she had derived some answer or special message for God. This time, however, she didn’t feel compelled to open Scripture. The few times she tried to read the Book of Daniel, she couldn’t even get past the first chapter. Franny was not convinced that this was what God was trying to tell her.

As she picked up her phone to dial a friend named “Dennis” who was planning on going on the camping trip with the group, Franny accidentally messaged someone named Daniel that was in her phone. She had forgotten this person was even in her phone. She had only met him once before, about 2 years before her return to God. She messaged who she thought was Dennis about the camping trip, and she received a response from Daniel who asked, “Who is this?”

“Sorry, wrong number,” Franny quickly responded.

Apparently Daniel had kept Franny’s number in his phone because he wrote back again and said, “Francella, is this you?” They went back and forth.

Daniel then proposed that they meet up at the end of summer. “This is going to be so awkward,” thought Franny. She felt she needed to meet him sooner, so she proposed meeting the same week. Daniel agreed. Franny thought to herself that maybe God was wanting her to preach to him about Christianity. Before their meeting she even asked several friends to pray for her in preparation for this meeting where she thought she would be introducing Christ to Daniel.

When they finally met up with each other, Franny shortly got to the point, telling Daniel about her change of direction in her walk with God, and inquired as to whether Daniel had ever considered a relationship with Jesus Christ. “Yeah, I’m a Christian!” Daniel replied.

Franny was confused. “What kind of Christian?”

“I’m Coptic Orthodox,” he told her.

Further confused, Franny inquired: “What is Coptic, and what is Orthodox?” Several thoughts ran through her mind:

When he said that [he was Coptic Orthodox], I was thinking, “[But], do you have a relationship with Jesus?” Because that is how Protestants think. Protestants think that people who are Orthodox or Catholic don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, that charismatic personal relationship. That is how I was taught to think about Catholics; I had never heard of Orthodox. So I thought maybe it’s the same kind of thing.

So Franny asked him, “Do you have a relationship with Jesus?” Daniel affirmed he did. “So you know Christianity?”

Daniel assured her he did and told her about a new Coptic Orthodox parish he had begun to attend—The St. Maurice and St. Verena Coptic Orthodox Church—whose mission included focusing on providing a multicultural church ministering to diverse members of the body of Christ from every nation, tongue, tribe, and language. It is well known within the Coptic diaspora as being a parish that conducts its services entirely in English, and is filled with many non-Egyptian converts to the Coptic Orthodox Church. After Daniel explained some of the community outreach and ministry programs the parish conducts, Franny was left befuddled: “Why am I here,” she wondered.

Franny invited Daniel to visit her Church, and after indicating he wouldn’t mind it, he reciprocated the invite, to which Franny indicated she was not interested. She was perfectly happy where she was.

The conversation fizzled out, and then Daniel told her about something he and his friends were doing on Friday nights, and invited her to join. “If you ever want to join us on a Friday night, me and my friends get together… we just started this really cool service where we go to the homeless downtown in Toronto and we bring them sandwiches, and bottles of water, and maybe blankets, and we sit and pray with them and we talk to them.”

Upon hearing this, Franny was in utter disbelief. “Are you serious? You guys do that?”

“Yeah, would you be interested?” Daniel asked.

“Yes! You have no idea! Where do you meet?”

Daniel responded: “Nathan Phillips Square.”

Franny couldn’t believe it. She was in such disbelieve she couldn’t even prompt herself to tell Daniel that night that this was something she had specifically prayed about. She was in so much shock that she just kept repeatedly saying, “I’ll be there.”

It was Fridays with this group of Egyptian people who were the most beautiful human beings I had ever met. They had such passion and love for God and were so loving and open to me and welcoming to me, and I wasn’t expecting that. I wasn’t expecting that kind of an embrace. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that kind of an embrace really ever.

I met the Coptic Church—because the church is the body… the Holy Spirit lives within us—I met the Coptic Church, not in the church building, but in the middle of Toronto. And they showed me what Coptic Orthodoxy was. They showed me the love of Christ. and I was so fulfilled and I couldn’t wait every Friday to meet up with these guys. We went around, we prayed with people, we talked with people, we brought them food, we brought them water, somebody’s mom would make sandwiches for us, and we had this incredible fellowship.

I invited a whole bunch of my friends who were Christian, who weren’t Christian, and we would gather together, and you had this mix of people from the Protestant Church, and people who weren’t practicing, people who were from the Orthodox Church; we would get together, pray together, and go out and serve the homeless on Friday nights, continuously.

Franny steps into a Coptic Orthodox Church for the first time

Daniel eventually invited Franny to come to an adults meeting held at the St. Maurice & St. Verena Coptic Orthodox Church. One of the meetings involved a topic that Daniel had felt Franny would not be interested in. Daniel was very hesitant when it came to evangelizing and he worried that the particular topic would somehow cause Franny to reject the Coptic Church. As he or his sister usually would, Daniel drove to pick up Franny and give her a ride to the church, but first they went to dinner and Daniel kept delaying, so that by the time they arrived at church, the meeting was over.

Franny saw a Chinese Coptic church member named Leonard, which did not seem at all unusual to her (although later she learned how special this particular parish was to have so many non-Egyptian Copts). He introduced himself and asked if she was able to make it for the meeting. Franny indicated she missed it and asked what the topic was about.

“Metanoia,” Leonard told her.

“What’s that?” Franny asked.

Leonard explained it was about repentance and prostration, and lowering one’s head down to the ground. Franny was ecstatic. “I do that!” she thought. She kept saying, “This is crazy,” and asked Lenoard to explain as much as he could.

Daniel saw how much Franny liked the young adults group, so he invited her to visit the Church on Sunday. Franny walked in and was bewildered.

I was so ignorant, so naïve, I thought it was going to look exactly like church looked for me, and it didn’t look anything like [that]. We’re standing up, we’re sitting down, we’re standing up, we’re sitting down. And I’m looking around and I’m like, “Am I even praying right now? I don’t feel like I’m praying.” It was just not the worship that I’m used to.

But as I looked around I saw two things:

I saw the women; their heads were covered. And I instantly identified with that because it was something that I was doing.

And then I noticed that what was on the screen were the words of God… psalms, and they were said to a tune. And I was like, “That’s what I’ve been doing at home!”

So as foreign as all of it was to me, I couldn’t deny those three things. The metanoia, the women covering their heads, and the liturgy in that it was put to a tune and you are singing God’s words in a tune as opposed to just saying them or reciting them.

After liturgy, when Daniel reluctantly asked if Franny would like to return some time, fearing that she would be turned off by how different the worship was, Franny told him she definitely wanted to come back. Franny did so for several weeks. Then she felt she had to return to the Protestant church since she had been away for so long.

Falling out with the Pentecostal Church

When she returned to the Pentecostal Church, much to her surprise, the church members not only inquired as to where she had been, but they expressed tremendous hurt by her absence. When they learned from her that she had been attending an Orthodox church, they felt even more so betrayed. Franny, in her naivety thought to herself, “What’s the big deal? We are all Christians. We can go to to a whole bunch of churches right?” To appease the Pentecostal church members and alleviate the strain she had caused, Franny made a concerted effort not to miss another Sunday with them and told Daniel she had to take a break from the Coptic Church, to mend the offenses she had inadvertently caused.

The more Franny attended the Pentecostal Church, though, the more things felt strange. People no longer expressed their former loving embrace. They seemed to have been so injured by Franny’s “betrayal” that they would not let it go. At one point the pastor’s wife, who had been very loving and caring in the past, gave Franny a very disgruntled “dirty” look and walked away. No matter what Franny tried to do to mend things, nothing seemed to work.

On the other hand, when every so often she would revisit the Coptic Church, the greeting was the complete opposite: arms spread wide open. “I just felt so much love in one place and so much condemnation in the other,” Franny recalls.

Finally, Franny sat with her pastor at the Pentecostal Church and explained it was not her intention to leave. She expressed that she intended on attending both churches. “I’m sorry, you can’t be divided,” the pastor retorted. “A seed can’t constantly be put into soil over here and taken out and put into soil over there. Where are you going to spring up roots?”

Franny, in her simplicity, said, “Aren’t you both Christians!” At this point in time she did not understand the significance of theology and the major differences between the Protestant and Orthodox Churches.

The Pastor explained that the Orthodox church may teach something different than the Pentecostal Church, and so that was not a workable solution. Franny felt so much anger from the pastor that she left the office in tears. She had tried to make everything right all this time and no one was forgiving her unless she renounced the Coptic Church.

Then Franny went to sit with Fr. Pishoy at the Coptic Church, because she felt like she had to choose one church or the other. Fr. Pishoy kindly told her:

The door is open. You are always welcome to come here. I’m not forcing you to choose anything at all. This is your home. You are always welcome, and I am always with you, and will always pray for you, and you can always come to me for anything. No matter where you go. No matter what you do.

Franny could not help but gravitate towards where she was being loved unconditionally. At that point in time she made the decision to stay with the Orthodox Church.

Continued in Part 2 of 2

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In the next blog post to conclude Franny’s story, you will get to learn more about the following questions:

• What was it like as a catechumen?
• What was the most difficult Orthodox belief/practice to get accustomed to?
• How did you handle the Midnight Praises and the veneration of St. Mary you found there?
• What would you say to someone who is struggling with the same issue regarding the veneration of the Saints? What would you tell someone else who comes from a Protestant background?
• How did baptism come about, and what has your experience been since being baptized?
• How has your relationship in the Church, its rites, and the Church Fathers developed since baptism?
• In developing your spiritual life, what has helped you.
• What do you say to those within the Coptic Orthodox Church who seek fulfillment outside of the Orthodox Church, particularly from Protestant sources?
• The Coptic Language, was it a stumbling block for you?
• Do you think that the Coptic language should be eradicated from the Coptic Church?
• Having visited the convent of St. Mary & St. Demiana in the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern U.S.A., what is your experience having done so and what do you like about it?