YEARS MARRIED: 13
CHILDREN: 2
YEARS IN THE DIACONATE: 5
HOW THEY MET: “Suly and I met at our previous workplace, a real story of love.”
HIS ROLE IN THE CHURCH: “My role is to celebrate baptisms, meet with families in need for funeral mass and vigil arrangements, Giving Tree Project for needed families in Christmas, Social Justice advocate, Mass homilies once a month, and community weddings.”
WHAT DREW HIM TO THE DIACONATE: “In the years I have been a part of St. Boniface Church, I have beheld a big treasure: the enrichment of its diverse ethnic populations as we are One in Christ. Indeed, I have discovered that the service has no limits, neither the way of loving our neighbor. So, on a Sunday when I was far away from St. Boniface, attending Mass in Casa Grande, AZ, I heard the reading of the Acts of the Apostles 6:1-7, and I discovered, in the homily, the importance of the diaconal ministry in a community, as the deacon realizes in unity and obedience to the bishop and assisting the Presbytery of the diocese. By the way, it was the deacon who was giving the homily that day.”
HIS MOST MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE: A few years ago, I used to visit the detention facilities bringing God’s Word to the incarcerated. There, an inmate approached and offered me a very “symbolic” present, it was a cross he’d made from a plastic bag in which he received his meal, a sandwich bag. And he told me: ‘I was waiting for you because I know that you bring Jesus to this place.’ I was so shocked by his creativity, by most of all by the words he shared with hope of finding ourselves again.
HIS GREATEST CHALLENGE: “When priests and deacons don’t understand each other in their own single and unique ministries. Each one has a unique ministry that enriches the mission of the Church: bringing more souls to Christ for their own salvation.”
FAVORITE SCRIPTURE: James 2:14-26 — “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”