Jeff Bail came to the Catholic church as a convert in 2001, after decades of searching for a spiritual home. Ever since he was a teen-ager in Copley High School in the early 1970s, Jeff was drawn to Christianity.

He grew up in a family of Methodists and Baptists, and for many years belonged to a fundamentalist Protestant church that did not consider Roman Catholics to be Christians at all. Then, he eventually became a Baptist minister himself, in a church that he was proud of when it became the largest congregation in Medina County.

But something was missing, he said in a biography he wrote for Marcus Grodi’s Coming Home Network television program "The Journey Home."

"The first few years it was easy, developing the ‘youth staff’ and administration or adding a new musical group...January 1, 1998 I decided my new year project would be to write and produce a full-length Christmas musical...It was an emotional high and achievement that I didn’t think I could surpass. January 1, 1999 proved to be a rough time. I couldn’t come up with any new project to pacify my emptiness. How could I be empty after such success? I begged the Lord to remove the emptiness with something…"

Jeff’s whole story can be read on the Internet at the Journey Home program’s Web site, http://www.chnetwork.org/ewtn.htm . What happened, after he and his wife Miriam moved around to several churches from 1999 to 2000, is that he finally attended a Catholic rosary service.

"What did I know about the rosary? What was I doing there?" Jeff recalled thinking. "Nevertheless, I stayed and to my surprise decided to come back the next Monday." He and a friend, another Protestant Bible student named Dave, began attending that rosary service every week for one year.

After he and Miriam, who have three grown children, came to Wadsworth in 2002, Jeff became active in Sacred Heart Parish’s Legion of Mary, and is a Eucharistic minister. He helps out with Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults programs on occasion, and has shared his enthusiasm for the church with the diocesan deacons’ retreat.

Involved with the Emmaus Roundtable, a Christian apologetics group in Cleveland, Jeff began speaking more often about his conversion. He spoke at a Path to Rome Conference in Vienna, Austria, in September, and then was contacted by the Coming Home Network, where he will tell his story in a program set to air on EWTN-TV at 8 p.m. on March 8.

"I would love for our church to be very evangelistic," Jeff said. "We have people who are part of the Catholic Church who for whatever reason don’t have a heart for it. Our goal is to preach the total truth and to get Catholics excited about their faith."