Almost four years ago, Faith Major was engaged to be married when she found out she was pregnant. Still in college but nonetheless excited to be a mother, she visited Pregnancy Resource Center (PRC) of Rolla, in Missouri, for a free ultrasound.
She came back about two weeks later, crestfallen. Her fiancé had broken up with her because she insisted on giving birth to the baby.
“I felt betrayed, alone, confused, discouraged, hopeless,” Faith recalled.
At the time, she was working a low-paying part-time job and had nowhere to live. Jane Dalton, who at that time was the center’s client services director, listened to Faith, and then asked her what she wanted. She wanted to give her baby life — and a good one, at that. She wanted to finish her degree, become financially self-sufficient and raise her baby to have a better life than she’d had so far.
Jane told her: “You can, and we can help you.”
Jane and her husband, Joe, had founded PRC of Rolla with several of Joe’s brother Knights in St. Patrick Council 2627 and their wives. The Daltons and the rest of the staff at PRC helped Faith choose life for her baby and vigorously pursue a hopeful future for herself and her child.
There was room for Faith at St. Raymond’s Home, now owned by PRC of Rolla and known as Bridges, a residence for women who are pregnant and in need of a supportive community.
“They convinced me I was not alone, that whatever I needed, they would help me get,” Faith recounted. “And that’s exactly what they did.”
After her son, Noah, was born, Faith asked the Daltons to sponsor them into the Catholic Church. She also befriended and later fell in love with their son, Gabe, a member of Council 2627. The couple got married this past summer at St. Patrick Church in Rolla.
“She once told me I’m her ‘knight in shining armor,’” Gabe Dalton recalled. “I replied, ‘Well, actually, I am a Knight!’”
Jane and Joe Dalton helped establish PRC of Rolla shortly after moving to the town in 2006. The Daltons were leading a national pro-life organization and raising eight children when they decided it would be better to do so in a rural setting. Within a day of their arrival, two people called to say they had been begging God to send a pro-life anchor to that community.
“That’s when I learned we had moved to a college town that had a Planned Parenthood but did not have a pregnancy center,” recalled Joe, now CEO of PRC. Council 2627 has supported the center from the outset with volunteer and financial assistance; in 2012, the council placed an ultrasound machine there through the Knights of Columbus Ultrasound Initiative.
The nonprofit center offers a wide range of services to women who are pregnant and in crisis or need, including consultations with certified, professional life coaches who help clients make decisions based on their own needs. Expectant mothers who want long-term help, structure and life coaching can choose, like Faith, to live in PRC’s maternity residence.
Before long, Faith was excelling in her college studies and soaring through the ‘My Ridiculously Amazing Life’ program. In 2017, she finished her degree, began her career as a cosmetologist and gave birth to Noah.
What’s more, she accepted Christ back into her life. Faith was raised in a Christian household, but family difficulties had made it hard for her to know and trust God.
“God really used my crisis to bring me closer to him,” she said. “And he continues to do that.”
God also used the people around her, especially the Daltons.
“I noticed that Catholic people forgive and love and give differently from what I learned to live like before,” she said.
A turning point came just after a trip to Washington, D.C., with the Daltons in January 2019. Faith was invited to share her story with lawmakers as part of Heartbeat International’s Babies Go to Congress event during the March for Life. There, she met Vice President Mike Pence.
“I got to tell him how I started out as a homeless, pregnant, part-time waitress, and went from that to being a mom, a college graduate employed in my field of study with a 401(k), and had started a business,” she said. “If that’s not a story of God’s miraculous way of turning things around, I don’t know what is.”
On the flight back to Missouri, Faith asked the Daltons about Catholicism, and their answers gave her peace and clarity.
“What I learned set well with my soul,” she said. “I asked God what all of this meant, and he said, ‘It means you’re supposed to be Catholic.’”
She began going to Mass with the Daltons each Sunday at St. Patrick Parish and preparing for the sacraments of initiation.
On June 23, 2019, Faith was confirmed, with Jane as her sponsor, and received her first Holy Communion. Noah was baptized, with Joe and Jane as godparents.
As she became close with Joe and Jane, Faith got to know the rest of the family, including their son Gabe, 21. A member of Council 2627 like his dad, Gabe helped her move into the maternity home and then into her own home when Noah was 2.
Both admired each other from afar but knew that a relationship would not be appropriate while Faith was a client of PRC.
“She later told me she thought I was trying to ignore her,” Gabe recalled. “In reality, I was trying not to stare too much.”
Gabe completed a welding course and accepted a job in Minnesota. “When he came back to visit, I saw him in a totally different light,” Faith recalled. “He was really mature and had a definite confidence about him.”
Faith was praying about marriage at Mass one day when Noah started to fidget in the pew. Gabe offered to take him to the back of church so she could receive Communion in peace.
After Mass, she found them both kneeling and praying in the Blessed Sacrament chapel.
“I saw it as a miracle moment,” she recalled. “My son never behaved this way. I’d sat next to Gabe so many times at Mass. My eyes were suddenly open and I knew he was the one.”
Not long after, Gabe and Faith went on their first date, and within months, Gabe asked 3-year-old Noah for permission to marry his mother. Noah said yes, and so did Faith.
The couple were united in marriage June 27, 2020. Joe walked Faith down the aisle. Two women who had lived with Faith at the maternity home served as her attendants.
Gabe is enjoying life as a new husband and a father.
“I believe God had been preparing me for Faith, as well as for Noah, my entire life in so many different ways,” he said. “I definitely didn’t always see it at the time, but now very it’s clear to me.”
Jane and Joe Dalton are delighted to have Faith as a daughter-in-law and Noah as a grandson.
“What I love most about Faith and my son is that they truly seek the will of God and then do whatever they possibly can to follow that,” Jane said.
Faith has started volunteering at the center and studying to become a certified life coach. She hopes her story will inspire other women who are pregnant and frightened to ask God for a miracle, and then work with him to bring it about.
“I’m so grateful the Lord is using what little I had to offer in exchange for all of these opportunities to draw closer to him and become the woman he always intended me to be,” she said.
Jane has counseled more than 10,000 pregnant women in crisis during her decades of pro-life work, and she is convinced that no one ever wants to have an abortion.
“It’s often their last resort because they think they don’t have any other options,” she said. “We tell them, ‘If you choose another option, we’ll help you fill in the gaps.’”
Faith is just one of the 3,397 abortion-vulnerable women that PRC of Rolla has served over the years. Of those, 3,389 have chosen life for their babies — over a 99.7% success rate.
“We give God 100% of the credit for that,” Joe said.
Jane called the story of Faith, Noah and Gabe a “God journey.”
“It’s what God does,” she said. “He doesn’t overwhelm us. He just keeps giving us a little bit at a time. Just enough for us to keep saying yes.”
Joe offers a challenge to his fellow Knights: “There are nearly 3,000 local pregnancy centers in this country alone. If you’re not already supporting yours, create a relationship with them and start doing things to help them.”
“Remember that all life is precious,” he said, “and that nothing is impossible with God.”
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JAY NIES is editor of The Catholic Missourian, the newspaper of the Diocese of Jefferson City, and a member of Father Helias Council 1054 in Jefferson City.
For more information about PRC of Rolla visit prcrolla.com; to make a donation visit: supportmyprc.com
Please contact the
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