Shannon Adams of Moon is in the minority.

The fact that she is a white, 14-year-old who lives in the suburbs with her mom and dad, Sallie and Robert, doesn't make her unusual.

Her distinction is that she is among the few her age who have not yet had sex, and plans to keep it that way until she's married -- a goal that once was the norm, but now seems a rarity.

"I don't want to be a mother right now," she says. "I've heard so many horror stories about how it can ruin your life. I want to have fun when I'm a kid,"

What about birth control? Shannon frowns and says, "It doesn't always work."

Part of her decision to wait also stems from her involvement in Silver Ring Thing, a worldwide abstinence program based in Moon.

Founder Denny Pattyn of Moon says abstinence until marriage might seem like an alien idea in today's society, but he says he is seeing a strong worldwide movement -- a cultural shift toward the concept. SRT just happens to be at the front end of it. Shannon joined the effort at age 10 when she attended her first SRT sold-out event at St. Philips Church in Moon.

Although she thought she was far too young for the program, she went anyway because she says her friends were going. She thought it was the cool thing to do, and she would have fun just hanging out.

But, amid the fun concert-like atmosphere, she also ended up learning the facts about sexually transmitted diseases, the failure of birth control and what God has to say in the Bible about sex before marriage.

Some of her friends went up on stage and were put into a scenario to see what they would do in particular situations with the opposite sex.

There were videos, skits, speakers and more, and by the end of the event, most of the 400 kids attending were wearing a silver ring to signify their commitment to abstinence.

Shannon has a different ring now, she says a little sheepishly, because she lost the first one. But, no matter, the commitment is still the same.

The ring features words from 1st Thessalonians, 4:3-4, a Bible verse that is the crux of the program.

The verses say it is God's will to be sanctified (set apart), to avoid all sexually immorality and learn to keep the body holy and honorable.

Shannon knows the verse by heart.

Although she doesn't have a boyfriend yet, she says, she hopes that when the time comes, she can think back to the SRT seminar and rub her ring a few times to give her the willpower to say no. Support from SRT also might help.

It has been four years since her first SRT event, but she still e-mails back and forth with the organization, which is the follow up part of the program. The goals of the e-mails are to help kids to open up and to ask for advice, to help keep them on the right path, to give them information and to let them know about upcoming events.

Also on her side is her knowledge of STDs, which she says scares her.

When other teens tell her about their sexual adventures, she makes sure they know they could end up with one of the 30 STDs out there, four of which are incurable. She lets them know that one in three people have an STD.

"Most of the time they blow me off," she says, "but I think they listen."

Although Shannon is a little too young to travel far away with the SRT group, she and her mother did help out at an event held at Seton-LaSalle High School.

Shannon sized the rings and directed people traffic at the sold-out event that catered to more than 800 kids.

A high honor student who sings in her school's concert and chamber choirs, Shannon is a member of the swim team and a participant in the English Festival. She also is a level one intern this summer for SRT, along with others who have traveled from as far as England, California and Texas.

The interns recently attended a ropes course to build teen leadership skills at Geneva College.

Some other activities for level one are learning the Silver Ring Thing history, dating status, presentation skills, warehouse set up and preparation for shows, writing skits, volunteering for fund-raisers for the churches providing the shows and more.

Next summer Shannon will be involved in activities such as filming, editing and lighting and performing the drama and the skits. Shannon, who will enter ninth grade in the fall, already is a year ahead, as level one usually is for teens already finishing ninth grade.

Shows are held all over the U.S. and even internationally. Hopefully, her mother says, by age 16, Shannon will be able to perform in many of the shows.

While Shannon struggles through the teen years, her mom, who also wears a ring to support her daughter, says she'll be there to help. The biggest challenge is keeping the lines of communications open between them, especially during the age of cell phones and text messages.

She says when she was young, issues brought out by SRT, which also has a parents' program, were not talked about.

"My mom wasn't comfortable talking to us about it. I made my mistakes. I wasn't the perfect Catholic."

Thankfully, though, she didn't end up paying for her imperfections, but she knows others who did. She was the friend of two girls who got abortions and knows about the pain they went through.

That's why she thinks SRT is such a wonderful program and why she is so happy her daughter will someday be using her talents in music and stage presence to help make a difference.

With any luck, Shannon hopes to find herself in the career of her dreams -- either as a television news reporter or as a marine biologist.

For more information on SRT, call Denny Pattyn at 412-424-2401 or visit www.silverringthing.com [1].