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​This Preface provides some initial commentary regarding each testimonial.

The testimonials are in chronological order and the best way to process and understand them is to read them sequentially.

Each testimonial demonstrates the unmerited grace extended to various family members—a son, a mother, a sister, a brother, and a husband, father and stepfather.  

The lesson learned is that God's mercy is infinite and that He delights is offering His salvific love to save family members through the doorway found in the repentance of one family member. 

In this case, a son who was lost—but then found. 

It just may take some time and prayerful perseverance. 








The First Testimonial

​"Born Again" - The Personal Testimony of Peter F. Carpentier, ESQ.

I am deeply indebted to the Roman Catholic Church for many personal blessings including education and a basic orientation towards the gospel message of Jesus Christ. Yet, it is my personal experience—based upon many years of adult and youth ministry—that the Church has failed to effectively evangelize the People of God and that many of its operative assumptions are flawed—particularly as pertains to the sacrament system. While the sacraments are valid in themselves ("from the work performed"), many times individuals receiving them are ill-prepared to access their operative grace because they have not been properly prepared. For too many, it is merely the reception of a merit badge. Preparation is the first essential and this may require both encounter and conversion.  Such is at the heart of the testimony you are about to read.



















The Second Testimonial

Baptism in the Holy Spirit

"I feel as though I have been cheated all of my life!"

Baptism with the Holy Spirit is an empowering experience, equipping believers for witness and ministry. This is the story of such an empowerment occurring in the early 80’s as experienced by my mother and sister during a time of worship at a Catholic Charismatic prayer meeting in Florida. 

My mother was born in St. John's, Nova Scotia, Canada on June 13, 1917. During the Great Depression, she, along her parents and her many siblings moved to Melrose, MA, where my grandfather was able to find work. They were an Irish Catholic family submitted to, and formed by, the many legalistic conventions of the Roman Catholic Church which was then immersed in a philosophical and theological fundamentalism which was singularly cultic, and in which both shame and guilt were writhing appendages from which it was very often difficult to escape.

This fundamentalism shaped and formed my mother’s prayer life and her way of thinking. She was always ‘spiritual’, and endured her life with grace, but she did not know that a personal relationship with Jesus through the gift of the Holy Spirit was possible and only a stone’s throw away. She would one day discover this truth in a profound way, but only after she had passed through much of her own life’s journey. It was God’s plan that such a discovery would be indelibly linked to my own story of salvation.

Thus, it was that I, along with my brother and sisters, were also shaped and formed by our mother’s adherence to her deeply held religious convictions and by the rigorous legalistic spirit imbued in them. Ultimately, this authoritarian structure would be rejected by me (as it would be by many of my contemporaries) resulting in an unrestrained plunge into the ways of the world seeking its wisdom. 

During this very ambiguous time, if you had asked me, I would have described myself as a Catholic Christian. However, the actual truth was that my Christian faith was primarily cultural, and my knowledge of Christ consisted of learned responses positing truth. 

So, when in the summer of 1978, when in a singularly miraculous way—through the ministry of Billy Graham, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit (following a time fasting and prayer), I was stunned at my Scriptural ignorance. In the years following my mother was confronted with a son unrecognizable to her. This son carried a Bible with him boldly proclaiming it anywhere and everywhere he went. From her perspective this was a fearsome and frightful reality, and she was tempted to conclude that her son had lost his way. She was deeply troubled by all of this and believed I had turned away from the ‘one true religion’ found only in the Roman Catholic Church.

However, after several intervening years, and largely due to a terrible and troubling event, this deeply rooted fundamentalist perspective would be definitively expunged.














PREFACE
Peter F. Carpentier, Esq., LLM, M.Div.
Born: May 17, 1942, Waterbury, CT.  
Founder: North Shore Christian Ministries
A FAMILY NARRATIVE

AN AMAZING STORY OF GRACE

NEW LIFE, SALVATION, PURGATORY AND HEAVEN

Geraldine (Kelleher) Carpentier
Born: June 13, 1917
(St. John's, Nova Scotia, Canada) 
Deceased:July 23, 1994

The Third Testimonial

My Mother's Death

My Mother was always a woman of faith, but as you will read in the poem she wrote after her baptism in the spirit,  she did not always know how to access the grace of holiness until her encounter with the Holy Spirit. However, once she understood that she had free access to the Father's Love, she was an unstoppable force for the Kingdom and able to move mountains through her unflappable faith in the Lord Jesus.  

My Mother was also devoted to Mary the Mother of Jesus and she and Aunt Alice (who lived with my Mother in Florida) faithfully prayed the rosary for the salvation of souls each evening. For many Christians such a devotion seems to devalue true worship of the Lord. For some this may be true, but we have discovered that a proper devotion to Mary only opens wide the access road to Jesus. Mary will then partner with those who love her in this manner and assist them through her great power of intercession. 
Gregory Carpentier
Born: October 6, 1945
Deceased: June 4, 2004
​The Fourth Testimonial

My Brother's Death


It is difficult to lose a brother as a result of war. It is more difficult when that war (the Vietnam conflict)—when ended, continued to erode the lives of those adversely impacted by its tragic consequences—drugs, sexual excess, moral disorientation and the continued living of a life governed by demonic impulses. Such was Greg's fate, and I have met many more like him over the years. There was no intrinsic value to that war which destroyed so many. No, rather it was a war orchestrated by demonic powers with only one agenda—the erosion and destruction of this nation and the elimination of its Christian ethic. 

​In the end, the powerful prayers of a loving mother and his siblings brought healing and deliverance to a beautiful man who would enter eternal life cleansed and redeemed. No longer did his bipolar personality plague him—having been cast out by the power of prayer conjoined with love. No longer was he guided by foul demonic forces. No, he would enter enteral life free of these entanglements—to the glory of the Living God.  
​The Fifth Testimonial

My Stepfather's Death & Release From Purgatory

​This is the miraculous story of a soul delivered from purgatorial suffering many, many years following his earthly death.  If you are a Christian who is Protestant, or a Christian who is Orthodox, or just a curious individual seeking truth, I earnestly recommend that you first read the article posted on this site regarding the historical understanding of Purgatory—which is also a Catholic doctrine to which Catholic Christians are required to assent. 

As a Catholic, I always assented to the Doctrine of Purgatory as it made sense to me, was supported by the teaching of the early fathers of the Church, and it did not contravene Scripture. 

Needless to say, as you read this testimonial you will understand how the existence of Purgatory finds its ultimate validation in my own experiential reality.  No one can take from you what you have personally observed and experienced—especially when it is validated with a stunning exclamation mark!   

While belief in Purgatory is not necessary for salvific faith—properly understood—it is to be seen as a further extension of God's mercy—offering salvation to unknow numbers of souls open to God's light—even those not fully evangelized. 

This understanding should encourage us to fervently continue in prayer for those we have come to know and love. 

Friends, I believe that the light souls carry with them at death may be increased by our prayers—and that such light may open the doorway of Life in God to them. 

So, let us persevere in prayer for them.
Arthur A. Carpentier
Born: July 31, 1909
Deceased: December 11, 1969