My brother sent e-mail last week, just the usual what's-new sort of thing. But I don't usually get or send these types from my family, because we're not that close. Anyway, it was great to hear from him.

He told me about a mission trip he and his wife went on this summer, associated with the Independent Baptist Church and a couple of pastors who graduated with Bob Jones University. They went out street-evangelizing in New York City.

Kind of weird that just as my husband and I become Catholic, my brother becomes more evangelical than ever before. They used to go to a non-denominational Protestant fellowship, so the whole Baptist thing was news to me.

My brother asked where we were going to church, and honestly, it took me a couple days to phrase my reply. I told him -- of course -- that we had become Catholic, and that we were as surprised as anybody that the Catholic Church could have been right for us, but it was and here's why.

So far, my brother hasn't written me back. Which might not mean anything -- I don't usually hear from him more than a couple times a year anyway. Or it might mean he thinks I've gone off the deep end again. He thought I was nuts 14 years ago when I got baptized in the Assemblies of God church I was attending. Of course, he was still an atheist then. I remember him telling me, "I just don't understand how an intelligent person like you could fall for all of that." I think I said something about how once you know there really is a God, there's no turning back. He became a Christian only about 5 years ago, and at that point we were both "evangelicals." But now I've gone Catholic on him, and I can see why he might find it mystifying. Especially if he's been taught all the misinformation about Catholicism that I was when I was evangelical.

I hope we get a chance to talk about it sometime soon. His birthday is a week from Thursday, and I'll be calling him that evening as I usually do. It might be an okay time to bring it up again.

--Sparki