• I am a cradle Catholic, the second of 14 children, born to Mr. and Mrs. Felix. It was the wish and prayer of my late father to be blessed with a boy as their first born and a girl as their second. This wish was granted. The first boy was named Joseph after the foster father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I was given the name Mary after the Mother of God.
  
  I thank God for my parents and for the gift of what I considered to be the ideal Catholic upbringing. As far as I can remember, morning prayers were said before the start of each day, and we prayed the Rosary daily. Evening prayers were said before supper, followed by teachings on the Word of God. We felt the presence of God in our home, and the name of the Lord was reverenced. If one of us was heard mentioning the name of the Lord, Dad would give instruction to the person involved to kneel and recite the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be to the Father. The fear of the Lord was instilled in our hearts from early childhood, and I cannot thank God enough for such wisdom from my beloved parents.
  
  Put God first and everything will be okay, that was my father’s motto. I grew up with the knowledge that life comes from God, can only be ended by God, and that He was everywhere......even in the middle of a leaf! One day, a few of my sisters and I gathered, and I remember taking a leaf and tearing it with such care, as we called God: “Mungu tunataka kukuona,” (God, we want to see you). The teaching of the Catholic Church is simple and clear; life is sacred and precious, so precious that the Lord saw it fit to send His only begotten Son to die for us sinners. Through the death of our Blessed Lord we have eternal life.We have no right to take human life at whatever stage, and it is an especially heinous crime to end the life of a baby in the mother’s womb. Especially if we believe that God is everywhere, even in the middle of a leaf.