A great deal has rained since 8 years ago, when the Lord was kind enough to recapture me of the shipwreck in which had been converted my life. After an infancy in which I had precious experiences with Him, meat had become I of the devourers of the New Age and the ocultism. Certainly the devil was the roaring lion that had found a prey to to devour (1 Pt 5,8).

But Christ came in my rescue and freed me of the gullet of the enemy. Immediately I found an evangelical church to worship with others. Little after my reencounter with God, my wife accepted also to the Lord and together we undertook the road of being evangelical Christians in Christian Friendship ("Amistad Cristiana") of Madrid. In the 6 following years we had the blessing of growing in that congregation. Christian Friendship was as a small family where we find true fraternity.

The man who was our Pastor, Gregorio Jacob, had to suffer a lot due to how a fool donkey I was, and to my difficulties to reach maturity as a Christian. Only God knows how thankful I am to Greg for all the things that did for me and for my family. And not only he, but brothers as Flores, Lupita Campos and many other were true blessings of the Father for my life.

God permitted us to see his power in the life of a very special brother, Miguel, who was an active homosexual during many years life, but that, thanks to the redemption of Christ and the sanctification of the Holy Spirit, was able to abandon that world of misery and corruption.

There was a time in those years in which our house served as an inn for various brothers that were in Madrid in transit or to serve in the Church. Still we remember a very special woman, Elizabeth, that with only 3 days of stay in our house left us a fragrance of God that with difficulty we'll forget in all our life.

The things began to change when I found a job in the delivery section of a very important enterprise of security in Spain. The job was in nocturnal schedule and six days a week, except for 4 months in summer in which I worked only five days a week. The fact is that it resulted very complicated for me to sleep well during the week and in Sunday was not me easy to attend with the family to the worship. Step by step we went away from the church.

When we decide to move us to a nearby population to Madrid (Getafe), the withdrawal from Christian Friendship was done irreversible. When I left the job and, again living in Madrid, we returned to visit Christian Friendship, it no longer was the same thing. Many persons had gone and new ones had entered. That is the law of life in a congregation, but the case is that I never returned to feel that the Christian Friendship was my church in the Lord.

On the other hand, I already had begun to study the history of the Church as well as books of teología, especially of anabaptists. We attempted to seek a menonit church and we found one indeed, but it was in Torrejón, various kilometers away of Madrid. Only we attend two worships in the house of one of those brothers.

The real thing is that we were becoming Christians without church. My church began to be the books and my chats with other brothers of different congregations. In not few occasions I attended the worship of the reformed church that is situated in Vallecas, a neighborhood of Madrid. A good friendship joined myself with the Pastor but really I was theologically very distant of the calvinism.

It was by then that I began my odissey in Internet. At the beginning I dedicated myself to participate in the chats of GCN, one of the most famous webs of christian chat in the whole Internet. Given that my English is enough acceptable, I obtained to do good friendships through that midst.

It was a few months later that I discovered the Christian forums (again in English) in the network. That was very different from the chats because the people had time of preparing the answers in the discussions. After an experience in Internet that I cannot tell you because it affects other persons, I moved away of the Lord.

Once again, He gave me another opportunity. Maybe it was then when more nearby I have seen the reality that the salvation is something that can be despised and to throw for the window. I know that there are brothers that do not believe that such thing can occur, but I say what I have lived. After experiencing the pardon and the power of the grace of God in my life, I returned to restart my web-roads in Christian webs.

I found the web of "Atrévete" —Dare!, www.atrevete.com— in which there was forum and chat. But Atrévete is more oriented to the youth and Christian teens. After a few months, I found a Forum that would be of very importance in my life. It is the Forum of the Kingdom of God (Foro del Reino de Dios, http://forums.delphi.com/elreino/), directed then by the brother Carlos Devetac.

In the Forum of the Kingdom of God I have dedicated many hours of my life in the last months. In a first phase I saw myself involved in a very sour polemics with a Pastor of Elim. It was not instructive in any sense that discussion. Then it began one of the most fruitful debates of my life under the epígrafe "Catholic Church". A few days after of the beginning of the dialogue it appeared by the Forum of the Kingdom Friar Nelson Medina, with which I have maintained a crossing of messages -or as says he, of letters- that has exceeded the three hundred. Of course other brothers participated also in the same debate and among all, not without difficulties, we obtain to discuss without fighting us neither to throw each other the stuff to the heads.

Although occasionally some ones entered —catholic or evangelical— that were achieving to rarefy the air. At first, the debate with Nelson rotated around the importance of the Word and its relation with the Community that lives that Word. A great deal I have meditated in that first part of our debate. I believe that good part of the "blame" of the decision that I have taken has its roots in my analysis on that so important aspect that it is the Word of God and the Church. Christ is the Logos of God, the Word. The Church is the Body of Christ. Neither the Church can live without the Word neither the Word finds its true sense out of the Church. That it is my current position. But let's go step by step.

After squeezing the debate upon Word-Church there was a big stop of a pair of months in which it seemed that everything that we had to say we had said it already. I think that it was in that moment when I discovered the Christian Web (www.iglesia.net). If the Forum of the Kingdom of God had been a blessing, the Christian Web was not it less. It can seem like a lie, but I have the impression that the epoch in which the forum of the web Christian had the old format is a very distant one, but it has passed only little more than half a year. By some reason that runs away from me, the discussions the Forum of the Christian Web have been "different" to the ones that I have maintained in the forum of the Kingdom of God. By saying it in some way, I have been much more belligerent dialectically in the Christian Web that in the Kingdom. I attribute it to the fact that the themes that I have must to treat in the Christian Web have been more "serious". For example, It is possible a degree of dissension about about some escathologic theories without affecting largely the bases of a Christian faith. However, if it is discussed about the Trinity, we are entering in a key land. Besides, in the forum of the Christian Web participated persons of an origin something more various, as is the case of some atheists as Stauros, with which I had various really interesting debates.

The case is that, between discussion and discussion, and partially due to them, I have studied more than ever the history of the christianity. But apart of the study of the history, there was something that began in spite in my soul as a ton of iron. The fact that so many persons had so different opinions on many doctrines, was carrying me to outline that something could not be well in all this. The "Sola Scriptura" of the Reformers is a very nice motto but that begins to be cracked when those Reformers were unable in achieving agreement about the interpretation of the Scripture.

In another level, the Forums were reproducing the same problem. I began to see that the Christian faith, the creed, too much depended of what to So-and-so or to So-and-so could seem that was the truth. I put an example. We know that there exist protestants that believe the doctrine "once saved, always saved", while other consider that doctrine as somewhat dangerous. The first ones and the others are proud to proclaim that they use the "Sola Scriptura" —only the Scripture. But the both bands cannot agree. And God is not a God of confussion but of order. Now, some of the two bands is teaching something that is not certain. Who decides who is right?

I began to meditate about how can we come to know in who holds the correct interpretation of the Word of God. Where to seek first? In the own Word. Thus I gave me account that in Acts, chapter 15, the Church had the first great meeting to treat a doctrinal problem that threatened with destroying the foundation of the own work of Christ. That is to say, how did the Church solve a serious doctrinal problem? Being gathered in a council in which participated ALL the Church, represented by the apostles.

Once seen this, for me was easy to relate Acts 15 with the ecumenic councils that the Church of Christ celebrated in the 8 following centuries to solve serious others doctrinal mistakes that were threatening to the Christianity. When the arrianism began to deny the divinity of Christ, Nicea proclaimed the truth about the trifold nature of God. When after Nicea begin to emerge abuses about of the nicean symbol of faith and appeared those which were denying of some form the divinity of the Holy Spirit, the Church was gathered in Constantinople to fix more clearly the universal creed. The Church was, and it is, column and bastion of the truth (1 Tim 3,15). When someone, using his own personal criterion of interpretation of the Scripture, was assaulting that truth, the Church was gathered and fixed the limits of that truth.

There were two possible options: or the great majority of the Christian bishops were wrong, or the ones that were wrong were those who were accused of heresy. Now, is there somebody that thinks that in Acts 15 the wrong ones were the apostles and the Holy Spirit and the ones that were right were those of the jew-party? Such a thing does NOT come to anybody's thought. Well, therefore I say and I affirm that the Church of Acts 15 was the same one that gathered in Nicea, in Constantinopla, in Éfeso, Calcedonia... And the Holy Spirit was also the same one.

That Church is the one that was able to discern which were the canonical books. That Church was the one that could write down a Creed that serves to define who is doctrinally a Christian or who is a heretic disguised of Christian. That Church was and is the Church of Christ. Evidently I am trying to summarize what for me was a progressive and gradual discovery. The key day in which all was turned upside down was when I realized that my faith was built a great deal more upon my own perception of the biblical truth that in which the Church of Christ has declared about the Bible herself. I was going straight forward in the road down of founding my own church, based on the faith of Luis Fernando! The fact that this faith coincide in great way with the faith declared by the Church in its universal councils did not diminish in nothing the reality that I was the one that judged what part is good there in those councils instead of being that Conciliar Church the one that judged what part is good there in my belief as Christian. The moment of the great question arrived: where is that Church of the eight first centuries?

Once you have realized that the "Sola Scriptura" theory cannot be valid, is up to a point logical to focalize the view in the Church in which I have grown up. Rome, the eternal Rome. Could it be Rome the solution? It is not necessary to say that after 8 years of protestantism, in which Rome has been always the great enemy to beat, the alone idea of returning to that Church was little less than ironic. After being been accused of romanistic by certain brothers that did not understand that I did not want to follow them down by the road of the armed confrontation —in a dialectical sense— with Rome, I began to think that really I simply was returning to be a catholic. The reading of "Apologia pro vita sua" of J.H Newman was a very significant key in this period of my life. Newman was an anglican priest that finished passing to the Catholicism in which he became a Cardinal. The curious fact about Newman is that he was able to understand the errors of the anglican system in which he had to live, but, at the same time, his anticatholicism, typical of the anglicans, impeded him to make the step that finally did. But, while reading the work of Newman, I realized something. I asked myself why that man ignored totally the existence of the orthodox churches. I did not find a logical answer to that question. Besides, the catholic Church to the one that united Newman, is not the catholic Church of ends of the century XX. That Church did not have the dogma of the papal infallibility. Neither that of the Immaculate Conception neither that of the Assumption of Mary.

Given that in my conversation with Nelson I had to analyze the basis in the Tradition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, I knew that this dogma had been rejected for almost all the Church during the first 15 centuries. I would say the same about the dogma of the papal infallibility. In those moments there was no other remedy than looking at to East.

What did I discover? Some churches that in the last millennium have not moved neither to right neither to left relating to the Christian Creed declared by the universal councils. The Orthodox Church is the great unknown in West. In spite of that many patriarchates must live together with a great Moslem majority that was not precisely friend of the Christianity, it can be seen that those Christians were not thrown to the insanity of changing his beliefs to accommodate to the society in which they had to live.

But aside from the historical considerations on the survival of some orthodox Churches, what I could understand with meridian clarity is that was that orthodox Church the one which was maintained staunch when from West was wanted to impose by the force a change in the Nicean Creed. When Carlomagno came to power, it began a theological battle in the Latin church about the incorporation of the term "filioque" (and of the Son) in the Nicean Creed to indicate the double origin of the Holy Spirit. It can seem a trivial matter but the fact is that the Church had accepted that the Father is the origin of procedence not only of the Son (coeternal and of the same nature that the Father) but also of the Holy Spirit (equally coeternal and cosubstantial with the Father). And the Latin church, headed by the bishop of Rome, decided that could change the things without submitting it to discussion in other universal council.

That in spite of that there were Roman popes (e.g., Lion III) that did oppose firmly to that inclussion of the filioque. We have then that the first church that decided that she alone could change the Christian creed was the Church of Rome. It can sound funny but I think that Rome was the first protestant church. That five centuries later that Church had to suffer the schism of the protestant churches was not another thing that the consequence of accepting the fact that one (be a man or a church) can change what among ALL (the Church of Christ) had been determined.

Once blessed with the certitude that the orthodox Church is the one that has not moved from place in the last millennium, the moment arrived to face the things that I did not understand of that Church. Evidently I am speaking of the icons and of the role of the saints and Mary. On one hand, I knew that my belonging to the orthodoxy could not depend on my personal judgment upon those aspects of the orthodox religiosity. If I had accepted the fact that was the Church the one that judges my beliefs and not upside down, I was not more able to begin judging the things that I did not accept of that Church.

But God knew that it would cost a great deal to give the step of joinning with a Church in which I would have the feeling that I was practicing idolatry of images. Then I attended for first time to a worship of the Greek Orthodox Church in Madrid. For those that never have attended an orthodox worship I assure you that that is another world. The orthodox liturgy with difficulty can be compared with a catholic mass of half an hour. For the time being, the worship according to the Greek rite takes an hour and a quarter. But that first hour and a quarter was passed to me as a glimpse. It would not be able to explain it with words but since that first worship I have lived all the week expecting that following Sunday arrived to return to attend another. Why? I do not know it. Only God knows it.

As it was been too difficult to be able to arrange an appointment with the greek orthodox priest, a friend spoke to me about another orthodox priest, Teófilo Moldován, , the one which is entrusted with the rumanian orthodox Church in Spain. Before following I'd like to clarify something. It surprised to me the attitude of the orthodox faithful before the icons. I did not see anything similar to idolatry. And I say that I did not see nothing that is seemed to the idolatry because when one compares how lives that people the liturgy and the cult and what makes before an icon with a idolatric adoration, it is evident that there is a huge abyss. I suppose that, as everywhere, there exist orthodox that may have an idolatric relationship with the icons, but I know that an orthodox that sits and live as something own the divine liturgy in which is given a very important role to the pneumatology, with difficulty can fall in the idolatry of icons . That is something that has remained still clearer this passed Sunday when I attended the orthodox worship celebrated by Moldován. If the Greek orthodox worship spent an hour and a quarter, this one took 2 hours 15 minutes. And, again, it has been an unforgettable experience for me.

The participation of the personal in the orthodox rumanian cult is more active. The songs, though hardly I understand the letter, they are precious. The previous moment to the Eucharist is something wonderful, when ALL the faithful approach before to the priest, so that he pray and imposes his hands on each brother and sister. Before of the beginning of the cult, the people passes a paper with the names of the persons on those it is wanted that the priest pray. I suppose that aside from names of persons also is written concrete needs. The case is that good part of the second hour the priest devotes it to lift before of God all those petitions.

After the worship, I spoke with the Teófilo's wife and she said to me that he not would be able to attend me well in that moment, since several persons wanted to speak with him for pastoral counseling. Teófilo approached me and he said to me that today in the morning we would be able to speak with more calm. And thus it has been.

I have found a man that quickly has known how to listen to me and how to understand my situation. As immediately I have told him the reasons that bring me to ask my income in the orthodoxy, he has accepted willingly to facilitate the things for me, so that in subsequent worships he will provide me a guide that will serve me to follow with more facility the worship. Given that the Rumanian derives from the latin, I could grasp in certain way the sense of the sermon that gave that first Sunday, thing that I thank God.

Well, I want to put an end to this small history of my religious beliefs. When today I was speaking with Teófilo Moldován I said to him something that I feel is true. When God saved me of the shipwreck, I grappled with all my forces to a wood raft so as not to drown. In that raft God has sustained me during 8 years, no permitting that I come back to immerse. But a wood raft goes where the stream goes. It can stay in the ocean during years and years without arriving to no site. God has not wanted that I stayed in that raft and has caused that a great ship passed near to me. I lifted my arms and I requested help. Now I am rising by the steps of that ship. I know that the ship has as destination the firm land. That land is not other that the new skies and the new land that God has promised us. To God I give thanks for conceding me the privilege of be member of the Church that he established 2000 years ago. That Church is now basis and column of the truth and of my life. Christ is the rock and the cornerstone. In Him I trust.

May God bless all you.

Fray Nelson Medina translated this testimony from the original that I wrote in spanish. I want to thank him for his work.

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