My dad is quite a wild man. When he came back to Christ after being away in his 20s, he had a powerful experience of conversion. He decided a normal Christian life didn’t appeal to him and he became a missionary—a radical missionary. He wanted to go where Christianity was illegal and bring them the hope of the gospel. 

My parents worked in Eastern Europe as missionaries, smuggling bibles into communist countries, and helping plant churches there, so my first major faith encounter was involuntary.

When I was really young, my parents got caught at the border in Russia with a load of bibles, and they put our whole family in jail. They kept my father without food and water and sleep, and told him he would be taken away and never see his family again, but he had an epiphany that they had no authority over him, and by the power of the Holy Spirit our family was released after four days. I became very sick from the prison water as they wouldn’t let my mother boil it, and after 2 weeks of being very ill and near death, I was also healed.

Once they were released, we got out of the country because they were now blacklisted. After all that, you would think that would deter them from missionary work, but they just decided that was still their call and they moved on to other Communist countries where they had no record of them.

My whole childhood and youth was as a missionary kid. I remember going to Romania for “vacation” and being stopped by men with huge rifles and ripping our van apart for bibles. Most teens go through a rebellion against what their parents think and the faith that has been told to us - but I was traveling all over with my parents, seeing the Holy Spirit move in amazing ways, and seeing people’s lives being changed by Christ, so was always confronted by this direct evidence of the importance of faith and the reality of God.

After the fall of Communism, we went back to Romania and instead of rifles and scouring our van, they were offering us tea at the border! We were openly handing out bibles in the town square. People were dying for truth. We were mobbed because people were so hungry for bibles. I’ll never forget that.

We were in Germany when the Berlin wall fell. 

You see the difference between people who didn’t have access to hope and then getting a taste of God. It’s hard to walk away from that and not believe that God is real, good, and able to transform our lives.

I was super blessed because I had these incredible experiences of seeing miraculous stories first hand where you usually just read or hear about them. I went through challenging times but I never had any interest in rejecting my faith. I was very blessed in that sense. 

My bigger crisis came when I came back to Canada for university—I hated all my classes and got bad grades. I had a crisis of vocation and direction. Even then, my faith really came through. I received wonderful spiritual direction during my crisis. I was at a conference and received a prophecy that I would have healing hands and do medical missions. That totally charged me up academically and I went back to school with a powerful new direction. 

In university I also met a wonderful Polish Catholic girl and it completely broadened my horizons. I had no experience of the Catholic or Lutheran Church — in my tradition it was known as “dead religion” and in the Protestant evangelical circles I was raised in, there was almost an anti-Catholic approach. We thought it was focused on ritual rather than relationship, and there was definitely a bias against it, as well as many misunderstandings.

When we started dating, we would go to both a Protestant service and Catholic Mass. When I was in the middle of medical school and surgical residency, time was super tight, so the Catholic one hour Mass worked for me! Ewa was for sure never going to miss Mass so going to two services every Sunday wasn’t a good option.

Years later we had little kids and I was in the thick of surgical residency but I was curious and learning. I read lots, talked to priests, ministers—one by one the big obstacles that I had with the Catholic Church, I came to peace with them. 

It was during this time, I was actually having an argument with my wife about a theological difference and I was so fed up with the end of the argument, I told her I was going to do RCIA to prove my point. My road to becoming a surgeon was 14 years long and I was coming to the end, where for the first time in a long time, I was not perpetually studying. 

Little did I know that it would be such a beautiful experience for me, one that I will cherish forever, and I was received into the Catholic Church at Easter 2008.

The two things that hit me the most with joining the Catholic Church were Confession and the Eucharist. A grace you can touch and feel and access. They are so powerful. 

12 years later, I felt the nudge and call of God to enter the diaconate. I’ve now become a Deacon, which was a hard journey in itself. I was and am still working, have a busy practice, and four busy kids. 

My wife was against my becoming a deacon—she wanted me to be Catholic but not that Catholic! She wanted me to wait. We had so much going on and it would demand more of me in certain areas. But I’ve always had the life philosophy that if you feel a vision, call, or a risk that God has for you—just do it. That’s always worked out for me. I have no idea if I’ll have a long life or a short life, but I knew I had to do it now. I felt that longing and desire very strongly. We had a lot of debates about that, and went through 2-3 really challenging years.  The demands of life and the diaconate journey were high.

There were signs it was God’s desire though. I have had the experience of Him giving me the signs to affirm I’m on the right track. My letter of acceptance from the Archbishop came on my birthday—and one of the only feast days of a deacon in the liturgical calendar. There’s coincidence and then there’s God-cidence. 

Even little things like the grace of going to online courses right as COVID hit. Without that, I could have never done it. There’s no way I could work all day and go to UBC all evening. As a deacon, you're still fully involved in your workplace and profession. It was a gift that the pandemic forced formation classes to be virtual, so I could do them from home and still fulfill my home responsibilities.

In all my life, I have felt the gift of living a faith that is sacrificial, hard, even life-threatening at times. No matter where or how I’ve been practicing, I’ve seen a radical gift come with radical trust in God.

Seeing my parents enter in so boldly to their own call set me up to do the same in my faith in my life with my family, job, and marriage. To take risks. To be curious. To wander into unknown territory and discover the adventure that comes with listening to the voice of God.

I want that kind of life for every minute I have left on earth.

Growing up in the mission field, I learned that it’s important to treat time like it’s tight and precious. Yet in our society we have a tendency to defer things. If someone comes with a need, we say we’ll meet later or I’ll pray for it tomorrow. I have a strong conviction that we need to do these things right away! We have the luxury of perceived time that doesn’t actually exist. We think we’ll have time in the future but we have to do it in the moment. When people come to ask for prayer outside church, I want to do it right now— wherever we are, whatever plans I have. 

Just today, as I write this, there was someone in Emergency that needed prayer. I’m helping the chaplain at St. Paul’s Hospital, and I could say “well let’s pray for them tomorrow”. Or later. I had a whole plan for the day and it was easier to just defer the request for another time—but I really wanted to be okay with being interrupted. We need an urgency in our spiritual life. I feel that with the diaconate. 

Of course, it’s more attractive to walk the easier path. When I felt called to the diaconate, it was not because it was easy. It took some years before my wife and I came to an equilibrium about it, and we still struggle sometimes. To this day, she sits without me in the pew at Mass, while I am by the altar. The call is a real sacrifice for her also.

We can always push things off until tomorrow, next week, or next year, but we might miss exactly what God has planned for us. And I never want to miss what God has for me.

So I encourage everyone to not be afraid of the risks that God calls us to, but to embrace them, discern the path, and run into it.