A Family Story of God's Faithfulness

Rick Ramunno • December 21, 2022

In 2015, I prayed that someone from my family would get baptized before 2020. At first, I prayed consistently but then about a year later I stopped. I had started to lose faith. That didn’t mean that God had stopped working, though.


In 2018, my parents came to church a few times in Denver and heard me preach. They met some people their age and realized people weren't “weird”. I even found out that they started giving financially to the church. They would come to church once every few months and watched consistently online


In the summer of 2019, I was hanging out with a friend who leads a campus ministry in New York City. I told him my parents were getting more involved. He suggested I ask them if they wanted to study the Bible and learn what becoming members may entail. I asked my mom about a month later at lunch if this was something that might interest her. She was actually offended because she thought that they were members! Fortunately, they weren’t too upset and began studying the Bible in greater depth.

Throughout their Bible studies, they wrestled with the scriptures and both grew deeply in their faith. They were both baptized on December 24th, 2019. Then, only a short time later, in the summer of 2021, my dad got diagnosed with Anaplastic cancer and died a week later.


His death has been extremely hard for our family. However, my brother and sister-in-law had become very interested in his recent spirituality and love for God which manifested in the time before his death. The three of us began to share some very candid talks about where their faith was and where they stood before God.

A year after my father’s death, my sister-in-law started going to church in Fort Collins, just north of Denver. This past summer, she started studying the Bible and was baptized on August 31st. 


My brother then switched his work schedule so that he could also begin attending church regularly. He started studying in September and got baptized on November 29th of this year.

Obviously, my dad's death was unexpected and terrible. But God has worked through it and made a lot of good come from it. My family might not be in this place if not for having suffered through it. Our story reminds me of John 12:24: "Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains only a single seed, but if it dies it produces many seeds"


As I reflect on these past few years, I can’t help but think of God’s faithfulness. Even when I lost faith, God did not lose faith or forget my prayers from years earlier. "if we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot disown Himself.” 2 Timothy 2:13
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