Mass and miracles bring a family to the Catholic Church

Salt & Light Radio helped them learn about the faith

James and Jena Murrell (ICR Photo/Emily Woodham)

By Emily Woodham

For the ICR

James Murrell believed that miracles happen. However, he never expected to receive one at a Catholic Mass.

He went to Mass for the first time at the beginning of 2024 simply out of curiosity.

“I told a cousin of mine about all the things that I had learned in my studies about different Christian denominations, especially my findings about the Catholic Church,” James told the Idaho Catholic Register. “He suggested that we go to the Cathedral. He’s a Baptist youth minister, but he is Filipino and has a lot of Catholic family members.”

His venture to the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Boise turned into daily Mass at the Cathedral’s chapel. At the time, James, his wife, Jena, and their four children were members of a Pentecostal church, where James’ parents, Brett and Sherry Murrell, also attended. Brett, an engineer with a deep love of theology, led a men’s study group there that leaned toward an academic understanding of Scripture.

“That study group was, in many ways, an extension of what was instilled in me in childhood,” explained James, who works as a website designer and administrator. “It was about how to assess historical records, (examine) theology systematically, determine whether information or accounts are true or false or the best that you can find in between —all kinds of nerdy stuff.”

James’ parents were both raised in the Episcopal Church, but they joined a Reformed Baptist church before he was born. The church taught that the gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased after the time of the Apostles, a doctrine called “cessationism.”

After graduating from high school, he went to a Baptist college in Oregon, where he met his wife, Jena.

“Growing up, she experienced a lot of churches. Some were Pentecostal and most were Evangelical,” James said. “Also, her family was very anti-Catholic. At one point, though, she needed to live with an aunt and uncle who were Catholic. That experience helped her to know that Catholics weren’t completely evil.”

"We don't want to get too far into theology"

James and Jena married in 2013 and moved to Boise. Not long after their move, James’ parents switched to the Pentecostal church.

James thought that church was “a little weird,” but he and Jena decided to join anyway.

“Theologically speaking, Pentecostalism basically borrows Baptist theology and then puts mysticism on top of it,” he said.

Through different difficulties and health concerns, James and Jena found themselves unable to deny “God’s faithfulness and the reality of miracles,” James said. “The Pentecostals changed my perspective on the mystical aspects of the Holy Spirit and that God fully works in the world.”

However, because the Pentecostal church emphasized spiritual experience over intellectual study, only a few men were interested in consistently being a part of the study group led by James’ father.

“‘We don’t want to get too far into theology’ is the exact sentence that was said so many times among us,” James said.

However, their desire to know more about the reasons for the differences in theology in Christianity was stronger than fears about being too academic.

The Murrell family poses for a picture in front of their beautiful rose bushes. (ICR photo/Emily Woodham)

Enter Salt & Light Radio

In 2023, around the same time that the group was becoming more intentional in their research, James and Jena got a second car.

“I got my parents’ old Dodge Caravan that only has a cassette player and radio — not even a CD player. So I began listening to some talk radio while I drove.”

One day, James came across a radio program that was discussing theology.

“They started talking about things that were specifically Catholic that I’d never heard before in my life. It was fascinating.” The station was Salt & Light Radio, the only Catholic radio station broadcast from Idaho.

James brought his new discoveries about the Catholic Church to the study group.

“Things from a Catholic perspective were all kind of new to everybody in the group for the most part. It sparked a quest not so much about the Catholic Church but to find out what all the different groups of Christians actually believe. So, being that a bunch of us in the group were engineer-types, naturally the thing we had to do was make a spreadsheet.”

The study group created an Excel document to plot the answers from each denomination or branch of modern Christianity to every controversial theological question. Their spreadsheet became so detailed that they created a quiz from it for Protestants to see where their individual beliefs matched with other denominations.

“All this research also begged the question: ‘What was early Christianity like?’ So, we started slotting answers from the early Christians. And then it got really scary because the answers were the same as in the Catholic and Orthodox groups.”

In the late spring of 2023, James announced to Jena and some of their friends that he wanted to start praying for the intercession of the saints. Jena became very angry. She was raised to believe that Catholics were idolaters. She also feared that by praying to the saints, James would make their family vulnerable to demonic attacks.

Eventually, Jena was able to be at peace with James even though she disagreed with his decision to seek the saints’ help.

St. Francis de Sales makes an appearance

That summer, their family went to the Oregon coast for vacation. On the way back home to Boise from the beach, they stopped in Baker City. James noticed a cathedral as they were driving and suggested the family visit it out of a love for history and architecture. He kept silent about any religious reasons, but Jena was skeptical.

When a person at the cathedral let James and the children in, Jena was lagging behind. The door shut before Jena could get to it. When she tried to open the door to join the family, it was locked.

“Because I knew Jena’s feelings about the Catholic Church, I thought she didn’t enter because she didn’t want to be in the church. I now know that I should have checked to see what was really happening. It was a darkly ironic circumstance.”

A priest gave James and the children a tour. Then, he let them know that the cathedral was under the patronage of St. Francis de Sales.

“I had just finished reading Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales. It was one of the best books that I’ve ever read on the topic of living as a Christian. The coincidence of just reading the book by him and then being at that cathedral just really hit me. It seemed to happen out of nowhere.”

In the Cathedral of St. Francis de Sales, a shift happened within James.

“Catholicism went from being a secretive hobby that I’m trying to integrate into my life to figuring out a path to the Church itself. My poor wife was so upset all the way home because she kind of knew what was happening, even though I didn’t explicitly say it. She could just tell.”

James did not immediately rush to join an Order of Catholic Initiation of Adults (OCIA) class.

“I sorted out a deal with Jena. I told her I have to become Catholic but that I was not going to leave her and the kids. I kept going on Sundays with the family to the Pentecostal church.”

A strange kind of hunger

Then in January 2024, his Baptist cousin said he would go with James to Mass.

“We went to daily Mass at the chapel in the cathedral in Boise,” James said. “Firstly, I never expected to hear that much Bible in the Mass. Secondly, the priest celebrating the Mass was Father Tim (Segert), who is a convert and has a Pentecostal background.”

When Father Segert, parochial vicar at the Cathedral, fractured the Host and elevated it, suddenly James became hungry.

“The strange hunger was kind of freaking me out, but it was also really cool.”

James decided to go up to Father Segert in the Communion line with his arms crossed so that he could receive a blessing.

“The blessing was simple, but it felt great. When I sat down in the pew, I realized that my sciatica was gone.”

James suffered from a sciatic nerve condition following a sports injury that happened when he was 15.

“For years, I couldn’t sit or drive for long periods of time without it hurting,” he said. “Then, after the blessing by Father Tim (Segert), the pain was just gone.”

The sciatic nerve condition was completely healed and has not returned.

Later, James met with Father Segert.

“He gave me very good advice, which was to focus just on being a good father and husband. ‘Love your wife. Don’t argue with her so much. Give her the space to go through the same process that you went through without trying to rush it with your own impositions of answers.’ Following that advice began to bring healing into our marriage.”

James went to church with Jena and their children each Sunday at the Pentecostal church. He quietly went to a Catholic church for Mass at another time during the weekend or to daily Mass during the week. Then in 2025, things rapidly began to change.

“Our whole life started to fall apart in a lot of respects,” James said. “Due to some disillusionment with the prosperity-oriented teachings at the Pentecostal church, both Jena and I wanted to take our family elsewhere for church. We decided to go to an Assemblies of God church, which is still Pentecostal but with more structure and not prosperity-focused.”

That spring, James lost his job working remotely for a large corporation. Then his father had to be hospitalized for a neurological disease.

However, by the end of the summer, things began to work out for the best. James’ father had a long recovery, but it helped to bring James and Jena closer together. James decided to step out in faith and start his own web design business, which further united the husband and wife.

The Murrell family stands in front of Holy Apostles Church in Meridian where they attended OCIA and were eventually brought into the Church. (ICR photo/Emily Woodham)

 An interior embrace of maternal love

Jena was still upset that James was continuing to pursue the Catholic faith until later in 2025, on the night she came down with a violent stomach flu. After James tucked their children into bed and made sure Jena was resting, he sneaked into his office to get his hidden rosary.

“I prayed the rosary quietly in my office with the intentions of Jena’s well-being, hid the rosary, then sneaked back to check on her. To my surprise, she was sitting up in bed and glaring at me as I entered.”

Jena asked James if he had prayed the rosary. He told her he had and then asked how she knew.

“She explained that a while after I left, she felt an interior embrace of maternal love followed by an end to the nausea.”

After this miraculous encounter of the Blessed Mother through the rosary, Jena and the children began going with James to Mass.

Welcome home

James and Jena entered OCIA at Holy Apostles and were confirmed in the Church on the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

“The children are delighted. Our older two are on track for OCIC, and the younger two will be baptized as soon as possible,” James said.

As for his former study group, another member of the group entered OCIA this month. Although his parents have chosen not to become Catholic, they are supportive of James’ and Jena’s decision.

“They came to our Confirmation and gave us a very kind congratulations card. For now, they seem content to observe us being at peace together and passionate about Christ,” James said.