God Leads, We Follow
My name is Kevin Shook. My wife, Dawn, and I moved to Liberty Township from the Washington, D.C. suburbs in 2017. Dawn and I met in January 2004 while serving in the Virginia Army National Guard. Our unit was preparing to deploy to Mosul, Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. This was at a point in my life when I was a single dad, with two young children that I was leaving behind, and I was feeling lost and full of self-pity. I had lost sight of God. Dawn was a practicing Catholic who converted to the faith in 1999. She asked me to join her in attending Sunday Mass and, being in a war zone, I felt that I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Going back to Mass gave me comfort and hope and it released the burden of my problems.
When we returned from our tour, we realized that God had brought us together. We married, and together, we raised my two children, Zoe who is now 26 years old and married with 2 little girls, and Gage, who is 23 and just got married in May and our two youngest, Ally, who is 19 and in her second year as an English major at Thomas More University, and Michael who is 17 and a senior at Stephen T. Badin High School in Hamilton.
As I mentioned, when I met Dawn in 2004, I had fallen away from the Catholic faith. I was raised Roman Catholic, but my first wife did not share my faith. Zoe and Gage were not baptized until I met Dawn. Getting back to the faith and sharing that faith with our children brought us all closer together. Our Catholic parish in Virginia became an extension of our home and the children attended Catholic school there. Both Dawn and I were heavily involved in volunteering, and with four kids, life was passing by quickly. One April, I brought Dawn out to Cincinnati for a 10th anniversary trip. We took in the sights and attended Mass at St. Peter in Chains Basilica where the priest blessed our marriage. Driving around we saw a couple of open houses and decided to check it out. We were impressed with the infrastructure and the smaller communities and thought about moving to Ohio. We were not sure if our jobs would allow us to work remotely, but when we got home and prayed on it, we decided to take a leap of faith by putting a down payment on a lot of land. God leads and we follow. In the summer of 2017, right after Zoe graduated from High School and went off to college, we packed up and moved to Liberty Township. My mother-in-law also decided to move to Ohio to be closer to her grandchildren and she purchased a lot across the street from us.
Prior to moving to Liberty Township, we researched available Catholic schools for the younger two. The Catholic community was much bigger than we were used to and both Mother Teresa and St. Susanna had no room for Ally and Michael. We kept looking around for a private school and found St. Francis De Sales in Lebanon. We started attending church there, since the kids were new to the area, and it was a chance to meet other families and spend time after church talking in the gathering space. St. Francis was a wonderful and welcoming community, and we quickly found friends and began volunteering, however, after Michael graduated and started attending Badin HS, we found ourselves looking for a parish closer to home.
St. Maximilian Kolbe Church was one of the closer churches, so we started attending Mass here. We enjoyed Father Jim’s homilies and trivia nights, along with the Fish Fry and Chili Cookoff. We were blessed to find another amazing Christian community and quickly made new friends. The St Max Welcome Orientation was also a great opportunity to learn more about the parish and events. Dawn and I enjoyed it so much that we joined the Welcome Ministry, and my mother-in-law enjoyed it so much that she decided to convert to the Catholic faith! We are so blessed to have found another extension of our home at St Max. We love the opportunities to deepen our faith in bible study circles and retreats, and we enjoy the sense of community that we experience in the festivals, trivia nights and potluck dinners. God led us to our home in Ohio. God leads, we follow.