Walking Into NFP & Faith Together
Sophia and Nathan Stene didn’t plan for RCIA and marriage preparation to intertwine, yet their parallel paths into the Church became the foundation of their life together. What began as Nathan’s late-night search for truth unfolded into a shared conversion, a deepening friendship, and ultimately a marriage rooted in NFP and faith. Their story reveals how genuine openness to God’s guidance can transform both hearts and the future they build as a couple.
For Sophia and Nathan, RCIA and marriage prep overlapped. The couple were married in January 2024, shortly after receiving confirmation. Nathan remembers a day, pre-conversion, when he was chatting with Mormons in between classes at Oklahoma State University. The doctrines they described didn’t add up to him. That night, Googling his theological questions led him to Catholic Answers and a deep dive into Catholicism.
Search for Truth
“This makes sense,” he said. “I kept clicking until three in the morning.” He remembers thinking, “In all the movies, churches are open at three in the morning. I just need to go sit in a Catholic church!” When Nathan found that churches in real life aren’t always unlocked in the wee hours, he signed up online for RCIA instead. Providentially, classes were happening that very week.
Sophia, also in college at the time, remembers Nathan avoiding her after his delve into Catholicism, unsure how she’d respond. When they did talk, she surprised him by asking if she could register for RCIA and learn alongside him. She soon fell in love with the order and consistency of Church teachings.
Marriage Prep and Learning NFP
During marriage prep, Sophia and Nathan took an NFP class, a little reluctantly at first. “I was open to life in theory but I think every woman has a bit of fear around getting pregnant,” Sophia says. “It’s a big change… a lot of it is internal.” The openness of their instructors in discussing how NFP and pregnancy bonded them as a couple eased Sophia’s fears. “It made us a lot more open in reality, not just in our heads,” they describe.
“NFP wasn’t something that was like a lightbulb moment for us, but it really was supporting everything we had learned,” Nathan says. “In our view it encompasses pretty much all core doctrines of the faith in one way or another,” Sophia adds.
Faith Through Fertility Awareness
In particular, the Stenes were struck by how their instructors blended the hard science of NFP, like numbers and graphs, with prayer, showing them how fertility data can be used as a sign of God’s providence rather than something to manipulate.
Today, as Sophia and Nathan embrace their vocation and delight in their daughter Olivia, they see how each step of their journey—RCIA, marriage formation, and learning NFP—prepared them to welcome both grace and new life. “NFP sets you up well for success in both your vocation as husband or wife and also in preparing you for parenthood,” they say. Their story is a reminder that conversion is not a single moment but an unfolding relationship with God, one that continues to shape their marriage and deepen their trust in His providence.
Written by Savanna Duca. This article first appeared in Family Foundations magazine, a benefit for donors to the Couple to Couple League. For engaged couples, find CCL’s NFP for Marriage Prep here. Find CCL’s PeakDay STMethod for married couples here.