by Leroy
I grew up in Wisconsin. When I was a kid, my whole family fasted. So I had a lot of support at home. I wasn’t open about fasting to friends or classmates. At lunch during the Fast, I would sit in the lunchroom and my friends asked why I wasn’t eating or drinking. I explained that the Bahá’í Faith has a fast for nineteen days. My friends were shocked. One said I should change my religion because it was too difficult. I found not eating or drinking easy, but was embarrassed to not eat lunch for nineteen days knowing my friends thought it was strange. After lunch a few days into the Fast, a classmate came to me, said the religion sounded interesting, and asked for reading material about it. This was the first time someone came to me with an interest in the Bahá’í Faith. I was so excited by this that I overcame my shyness about the Fast or the Bahá’í Faith. That experience gave me the confidence to share my faith, and I shared it often with classmates in high school and college.