Orlando, Fla.
Baha’i since May 2009

There were a lot of things, a lot of different ideas, that propelled me to the Baha’i Faith.

The Ageless Northshore website editors, Don and Peg Shearn, interviewed the Baha'i House of Worship Music Director, Van Gilmer, for a story on their site this week -- Van Gilmer: the Harmonious Voice of Diversity.

In 2005, in Encino, Calif., Holiday Reinhorn (fiction writer and wife of actor Rainn Wilson) led her first fireside (introductory presentation on the Baha'i Faith), where she answered the question, "How did you go from being a person who was very uncomfortable about discussions of spiritual faith, a person who wasn’t quite sure what to think when it came to God—to a person who just joined the Baha’i Faith?"

David Addy
Vista, CA
Became a Baha'i in Germany, 1989

Growing up in Germany, I first heard about the Baha’i Faith from my mother, who had a Baha’i colleague.

At the Washington Post’s On Faith, Remz Pokorny, a senior at Brandeis University, chronicles his decision to stick with the religion he was reared in by two very different parents.

Melissa Knudtson
Madison, Wisconsin
Baha'i since June 2007

By the age of 8, Melissa Knudtson concluded there was a God. Her parents were from a Christian background, but were noncommittal about religion and didn’t rear their children in a faith. The most religion she received was from going to church once a month with her grandmother.

Alvin Bitsilly
Mexican Springs, N.M.
Baha'i since 1991

Before discovering the Baha'i Faith in the late '80s, I was into drugs and alcohol and living a real trashy life. I had just started to try to get my life together.

BJ Lee, Baha'i since 2006
Eloy, Arizona

I was confirmed a Catholic -- my mother’s doing. My father was Jewish and an agnostic. Both raised me to question things and to accurately interpret information, which is what I did when searching for a religion starting in the ‘70s.

Veronica Fairchild
Sun Valley, Nevada
Baha'i since 2004

I was born and raised Mormon. I attended until I was about 17, but stopped attending because the church wasn’t treating my family the way I thought Jesus would treat His brothers and sisters.

Mary Jo Adams
Reno, Nevada
Bahá'í since 2007

I was raised Catholic, and for much of my youth dreamed of becoming a nun. But eventually I found I didn’t agree with much of the doctrine and felt unmoved by the services.