Tania Morris
I have always gone to church for as long as I can remember… and for many years would have said, if asked, I am a Christian. Of course I believed in God and Jesus but I had never really asked myself what that meant or consciously decided to follow that path. It’sjust what we did as a family.
I chose to be confirmed at 15 but I don’t remember what I felt at that time. At university I stayed well clear of the ‘weirdos’ in the Christian Union and I didn’t go to church in Sheffield – I only went when I went home for the weekend and that was the extent of my faith.
On graduating I got a job as a trainee broker at Lloyds in London and moved down in September 1991. A family friend suggested that I go to HTB (Holy Trinity Brompton Church) on an Alpha course as it would be a great way to meet people in London (his words, not mine). I went along and hated the first session. I wasn’t in the same group as my friend (his looked much nicer) and I felt really out of place. When I explained that I wouldn’t be coming back he got me moved to his group for ‘one last try’.
It was led by the curate, Nicky Gumbel, and the people in the group were really friendly and, above all, normal! I stuck at it and even began to look forward to Wednesday evenings. The discussion usually continued afterwards in the pub until we were kicked out at closing time.
On the Holy Spirit weekend I didn’t have any of the outward manifestations of the Holy Spirit like some people but I did feel like the penny dropped finally. I vividly remember finally understanding and, more importantly, accepting that Jesus had died for ME on the cross and being really grateful. I got home and rang my Mum to tell her that I had become a Christian. She said “Don’t be ridiculous darling, you’ve always been one”! She was worried that I had joined some weird cult or something – but a couple of years later she was the one that introduced the first Alpha course to their church and has led several since.
At the dinner at the end of the Alpha course one of the guys from my group asked me to have dinner with him the following Saturday. I accepted thinking the whole group would be going but turned up to find that it was dinner ‘à deux’. To cut a very long story short, he asked me to marry him 4 months later and we got married the following year. 14 years and 4 children later we are here in Paris…
We had a 2 year stint in Rome which was very difficult spiritually for us both. It has to be the city with the most churches per square mile but coming from HTB which was young and vibrant to the English church in Rome which was very high anglo-catholic (or at least seemed so to us) with smells and bells was a difficult step. We stuck with it but without much enjoyment. When we heard that we were moving to Paris, we contacted Nicky Gumbel for a recommendation and he suggested St Michael’s, in Paris.
We had been at St Michael’s for about a month or so when a visitor got up and gave her testimony of her time in Paris. She talked about a church in Versailles that had been very special to her. As Versailles was much easier to get to for us on a Sunday, we tried it out the very next Sunday (November 1997) and have been there/here ever since. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly that we felt at home immediately.
It hasn’t been plain sailing for us the whole time. At one point we were very low spiritually and considered leaving St Mark’s (not sure where we planned to go!) but then decided that if we wanted to change things, the only way to do that was by getting very involved. This we did and I am happy to say that we are very pleased to be part of a growing church and love St Mark’s and our extended family there. We also hope and pray that our children will grow up knowing God personally and learn from some great role models at St Mark’s.
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