Interview Paper: Lucy's Religious Beliefs

(After beginning the interview and gathering information I decided to switch up my questions, and narrow them down to be more specific to her personally from what I had in my oral proposal)

Carmen relies on her mother, brother and sister for support. She recently began attending a local Catholic church with her mother. Carmen has begun building a relationship with the Priest who has also been a positive support in her

She was raised as a catholic and attend a Roman Catholic Church back home. She states that her faith in very important to her because she prays every night and tries to read her Bible daily. She believes her faith gives her a purpose and mean in life. She explains that she is a spiritual person and understands clear ideas of what is right and wrong. She believes that she will go to heaven when she dies if she does “good deeds”. She has tried a few churches in America, but has not “felt connected”. She is hoping to find a church to go to in the future and also understand her faith more and feel “closer to God”.

Religion was an important factor in all of the issues of Elizabeth's reign, including marriage, succession, the crisis over Mary, and foreign policy. The nature of Elizabeth's personal religious beliefs is impossible to determine with certainty, although she seems to have leaned more toward Rome than her public policies would indicate. Two guiding principles shaped her stance on religion throughout her reign: to establish the Church of England as a mean between the extremes of Catholic and Puritan belief; and to eliminate, as far as possible, persecution for private belief. She had herself experienced religious persecution under Mary Tudor and perhaps for that reason decided to allow a certain amount of private nonconformity if a show of outward

Kylee Yoder, one of my best friends, has completely devoted herself to her faith. Kylee is a Christian and attends church religiously. I believe that Kylee is like Francis in the way of his prayerfulness. Kylee is devoted to making sure that she reads Jesus’ gospel daily. Kylee also reads devotions day in and

Lucy the Jehovah's Witness was part of my mental list of people that should have been bullied. To clarify, and to make a point not to sound overly discriminative, she was number one on the list, a numbskull at the highest degree. How she reached a popular status I will never know.

All around the world people have different clubs, groups and different organizations that there a part of that can make them who they are. The subculture that I decided to write about is Christianity. The main focus of this ethnography is to show people what Christianity is and to learn about the culture. Some characteristics of Christianity are faithfulness, kind, peace, honest, generous and loving. On Sunday March 6, 2016 I had the pleasure of interviewing someone from New Spirit Revival church she doesn’t have a role or position because she just joined a month ago, but she was thinking about joining choir, besides going to church every Sunday she has a husband and one child and she’s also a kindergarten teacher at Oliver hazard Perry elementary

At the age of sixty five, Grandpa retired and started to attend a group known as the Catholic Laymen’s Club that cater to retired men from the Cedar Rapids and Marion Catholic churches. “Laity means the body of the faithful, outside the ranks of the clergy” (Boudinhon 1). Laity members are known as the common people of the Catholic Church and have an important duty in fulfilling their role in faith. “They have a right to share in the common spiritual goods of the Christian society, which implies a corresponding obligation on the part of the clergy to bestow on them these goods, in as far as this bestowal requires the intervention of the ministers of religion and of the spiritual authority” (Boudinhon 1). The members of the Catholic Laymen’s Club carry out the Catholic Church’s mission of the common good by participating in activities that benefit both the community and the church. These activities include prayer, worship, community service, and many other benefitting activities (Boudinhon 1). When my grandpa first started with the group, there were only ten to fifteen members that met every Friday over lunch at Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids. Today, nearly sixty members attend Laymen’s meetings every Friday and the numbers continue to grow because of the success of the program. Grandpa, a lifelong salesman, has been responsible for inviting speakers to their Friday sessions. The guest speaker comes for a presentation, usually presenting along the lines of the Catholic Church and ways that the members can increase their faith and get closer to God. The Catholic Laymen’s Club ends their meetings with a question and answer segment for their speaker of the day and follows with a short prayer that is led by the speaker. Currently being the leader of the Catholic Laymen’s Club, my grandpa finds it very important for his group to reach out to the

From time to time, it was not easy trying to read my interviewee. I did not know if Ms. Jones was comfortable with me or not. She had no problem answering my questions and she was descriptive. She had this calmness and she never rushed an answer. I wanted to talk about something she likes, so I would ask her questions, such as what is your favorite tour stop to talk about. I think both of our favorite question was when I asked who her favorite African-American activist was. She said Maya Angelo. I thought that was ironic being that way she talked and her presence reminded me of Maya

Until recently, if faced with the task of describing a particular event or experience in my life that would influence my academic goals at CCU I am unsure I would have been unable to do so without giving it a significant amount of thought. In fact, I may have never been able to isolate one single experience that had such a significant impact. However, recently I was thrust into a situation that gave me pause and made me think how important it is for me to gain a better understanding and knowledge of the Word of God. For the last year my wife, daughters, and I have been between churches-going from one to the other searching for a place to call home. We’d spend a couple of weeks at one church, two months at another one before finally settling

Obviously, the set up for the interview was non-traditional, as I do not have office space to work out of and we are only students. Therefore, this was conducted in her small dorm room, which I believe did take away some of the authenticity of the session. In a simulated interview with a camera placed on me, I was aware that this was an artificial environment and there were bound to be more nerves and pressure here than what I will typically find out in

I had my interview with Nicole Willett, the head of the education department at the Mars Society. The Mars Society is an organization dedicated to coming up with plans to colonize Mars. I had this interview over facetime and acquired this interview by simply emailing a couple different people and seeing who would respond. I started off the interview by greeting her and thanking her for taking time out of her day to do the interview. She also mentioned that she teaches astronomy full time and this is what she does for a living. I felt like this was going to be a great interview because of her excessive knowledge on my topic.

This chapter is the next stage in the cancer treatment. This the second obstacle that she had to conquer in order for her to make it through this. The last thing that makes Lucy ‘beautiful’ in her eyes is following through her fingers. This is a momentous event because she is losing everything that was apart of her old life. Her face is different, her life has shifted dramatically, she doesn’t attend school often as she used to, and now her hair is falling out.

She had come to visit after work on Sunday, February 5, 2017. I had interviewed her in my room with the door closed to prevent as much background noise as possible and I had locked the door to ensure that no one would disturb us. I recorded the interview on the voice recorder application in my phone and had place it on my nightstand. I did not want Sara to see the recorder because she would be more self-conscious of her answers and worried. I did not take notes since I wanted it to be as relaxed as possible and taking notes in front of an informant would scare him or her. I allowed Sara to speak as much as possible without interrupting her. I occasionally nodded my head in agreement and made noises so that she did not get the feeling that she was talking to a wall. I learned that doing a formal interview is hard since, despite the preparations, it does not go as you intend it to. I had written a list of questions that had a certain flow to it but Sara answered a couple of them without giving me a chance to ask them. Thus, I was flustered and once she finished answering the question, I had to go over my list and quickly reject the ones that were answered and search for the ones that weren’t. The key questions that my informant addressed were in regards to the topic of marriage and religion. She talked about why she is not interested in marriage and the reasons why she would consider it as well as talking about the effect

For my Religious Experience Paper I decided to discuss similarities and differences with a neighbor of mine. Her name is Ruby and she is a practicing religious person. Our children play together all the time and she is one of the few people I trust with them. She has encouraged me to keep going and is extremely supportive. Her childhood was very traditional. Her dad worked and took care of everything exterior to the home including garbage, mowing, tree trimming, etc. Her mom stayed home and had a daily schedule of what she took care of (laundry, folding clothes, dusting, vacuuming, etc.). She made dinner every night except Friday and Saturday nights when they would go out to eat. Her parents have been together since her mom was 14 and her dad