It Became My Friend
I was raised in a very Catholic Dutch family that immigrated to the United States when I was six. We were sponsored by Saint Peter’s Catholic Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana. My father loved religious philosophy and we would often discuss religion at length.
In 1968 my husband, John Schach, took a philosophy class at Indiana Tech from Dr. Meredith Sprunger. Dr. Sprunger often used The Urantia Book in his courses. John brought the book home and, although he never developed an interest in it himself, he left it out in plain view.
In January 1971 I was living in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was the time of the Vietnam War, and John had left to go into the National Guard. His parents, who had been living with us, were also gone; his mother had died the previous year and his father had taken a job in Canada. I was alone in the house, four months pregnant, and right in front of me was The Urantia Book. Once I began to read it, I couldn’t put it down and it became my friend. It answered, and continues to answer, so many of my questions.
I kept on reading the book for twenty-five years without knowing that there were other readers like me out there. Then, in 1999, I gave the book to an acquaintance who looked it up on the Internet. There, to our surprise, we discovered a whole world of Urantia Book readers. Six months later I attended my first Urantia conference, in Vancouver, and was amazed by all the Urantia people there. I was going through a very difficult period in my life at that time, but I was strengthened by finding my Urantia family.
The Urantia Book has provided soil for growth as well as validation that there is an eternal adventure. It would take a book in itself to explain how my life has been affected by the Urantia teachings.
