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Christian Science came into my family when Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy healed two of my great grandmothers of incurable diseases. Faithful teachers in Sunday School taught me to love the Bible and to practice its teachings.

My family was entering into the study of Christian Science during my infancy. My childhood was graced by love felt through my mother’s selflessness and trust in God. As my father grew into the practical understanding of Jesus’ teachings, he and I shared many searching metaphysical discussions. At college and graduate school I studied philosophy and then taught philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. However, this initial academic work, which I enjoyed and valued, deepened my underlying conviction that the goodness sought by the world and myself is most directly found through the study of Christian Science and its healing practice. On my return to the United States in 1971, I focused on preparation for becoming a practitioner. After entering the practice, I soon continued contact with academic communities as a Regional Representative to Christian Science organizations at universities. In the 1980’s, as a member of the Christian Science Board of Lectureship, I addressed audiences throughout the United States and in over 30 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. Recently, I completed 10 years of service as state Committee on Publication.

Awful poverty in a polygamous family--these words describe well the condition in which I first became aware of my existence in the remote countryside of South-Eastern Togo, West Africa, where I was born. Traditional animism, worship of and belief in many spirits, nurtured my heathen early education.

I live in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with my wife. We have four children.

Occasional visits to a Christian Science Sunday school when I was a child had shown me the practicality of its teachings. Attending a Christian Science lecture was a turning point, and some of the ideas shared brought my first demonstration of healing during exams a month later.

As a small girl I attended Christian Science Sunday School in Provo, Utah. I remember distinctly learning that God is Love, and accepting it as true.

Attending Christian Science Sunday School as a child, I loved what I learned there of God—He’s everywhere, always Love, and All. But going out into the “cold, cruel world,” I couldn’t reconcile what I was seeing with a God who is Love. Putting my Bible and Science and Health on the shelf, I forged ahead, just trying to live a moral, meaningful life. I married, had children, was happy, but missing was a depth to life.  Science and Health beckoned to me. Opening it, I saw my grandmother’s note inside: “Judith Ann—Read this.  You owe it to yourself.” I did, for the first time. When I came to “The calm, strong currents of true spirituality.

As a teen I began to feel a deep intuition about the presence and power of a profoundly loving God, which became increasingly important to me. "How does God know himself and all of his creation?" I wondered.

As a child, I loved listening to Bible stories, especially healings performed by Jesus. These gifts of God’s grace seemed so natural, yet I couldn’t understand why God would not allow for such healings today.

Growing up with the stories of the healings that had brought my family into Christian Science – a great uncle healed of polio, my mother and aunt healed of leukemia – it seemed entirely natural to me, as a second-grader, to agree to pray for a sobbing playmate who asked me to do so after she tumbled off a swing-set. The fact that she quickly returned to play seemed equally natural.