Heartache leads to finding a faith community for an Elect

Friday, Feb. 26, 2016

BOUNTIFUL — Rayna Bennett was sent forth by the Saint Olaf Parish community to receive the Rite of Election in the Cathedral of the Madeleine Feb. 20; she is among the 442 people who will be fully received into the Catholic Church in Utah during the Easter Vigil. 

Bennett has thought about the Catholic Church since she was a young girl even though she grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness in Bakersfield, Calif.; her father’s family was Catholic, although he was a Jehovah’s Witness.

“It seemed to me that everyone in Bakersfield was Catholic. My best friend growing up, Daisy, was Catholic,” said Bennett. “Daisy’s grandmother was a devout Catholic who prayed the rosary every morning, and sometimes we would pray with her. I would go to Mass with them on occasion.”

But Bennett’s life took a turn when she got married at age 18 to a man who was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and they moved from California to Utah. She quickly had two children and began raising the children in the LDS faith. 

“He wanted a strong Mormon family and I did not; I didn’t share his faith,” she said. “After four years, we divorced, but the children remained in the LDS faith.”

Bennett then became involved in a brief but abusive relationship that left her with some financial problems, she said. Those problems were put at ease when she met Mark Bennett in 2005. 

“Mark came into my life and he saved me in many ways; he also helped me pay my bills,” Bennett said. “He was my best friend and he helped me see that I really could find true love; he was someone who loved me for who I am. Even though I thought I was broken, he loved me. We did so much together.”

Mark and Rayna were married in 2006. Mark was always involved with Bennett’s two children from her first marriage, teaching them manners, how to cook, to ski, and “he taught us to dive; we would go to Mexico for a month to dive,” she said. “And then Mark got cancer.”

Mark was treated at the Huntsman Cancer Institute for non-Hodgkin mantel cell lymphoma, a rare disease that shows symptoms only in the final stages.

When Mark was diagnosed, the cancer was widespread, but treatments put it in remission, Bennett said. 

“We made it through together. I felt like I would never be alone again. We had just made it through the roughest thing in our entire lives – together,” she said. 

In 2012, the family moved to Pennsylvania for Mark’s job. Then the cancer returned in January of 2015 and was chemo resistant, Bennett said. “We tried various treatments, but nothing slowed down the progression, and by June he was given two weeks to live and was put on hospice. He died on Father’s Day. I felt like I had lost everything, but most of all, my best friend.”

Last September, Bennett moved back to Utah so her children would be close to their biological father. 

Feeling lost and alone with her family still in California, she recalled taking her children to a Catholic church in Pennsylvania for dances, she said. “I wanted God in my life after everything I had been through; I couldn’t imagine trying to rebuild my life alone. I needed the support of friends and a community,” so she joined the RCIA inquiry class at St. Olaf Parish. 

“Despite losing the love of her life and raising two amazing teenagers, Rayna has taken a leap of faith to invite Christ into her life as a lifelong partner,” said Teri Price, Bennett’s godmother. “Her new parish community has welcomed her with open arms. When she asked me to be her godmother, I said ‘The bond doesn’t end at the Easter Vigil. This is a lifelong commitment, a lifelong journey.’ The joy she is experiencing in the Catholic rituals of learning the faith, the prayers and praying the rosary is contagious for me.”