After college I moved home to farm and ranch with my dad. We decided to build a feedlot where we would custom feed cattle for more income so that I could make a living. Things were going great and I really felt that I was doing what God wanted me to do. I kept getting more involved in the Golva community and the church. There I was about a year out of college and busy with the farm and my new career when I was asked to help teach CCD. After great reluctance I said yes. During that year the Eucharistic Adoration Chapel was opened in Beach, and after attending the mission that was held to institute the chapel I decided that I could give the Lord one more hour of my time on Wednesday nights after ccd class. I remember giving myself to God after something I heard in a homily. During adoration I said, Lord, do what ever you want with me, I give you my life. Towards the end of the year I had strong feelings that I wanted to do more and becoming a deacon was on my mind. Then Fr. Tom Richter gave a vocation talk in Golva one Sunday and immediately following the mass I was confronted by Christine Finneman and she told me that I would make a good priest. After telling her that becoming a priest wasn’t in the picture at all and that I was thinking that I wanted to be a deacon, she said that’s good but she still wasn’t going to take me off her prayer list for becoming a priest. After talking with Don our local Deacon and his wife Marie, I learned that I was going to have to wait quite a while, especially because I wanted to have a family.

The times started getting tough when my dad got sick. He was diagnosed with cancer and we had the worst farming year that we had had in a long time. During the midst of everything that was going rotten in the summer of 2006, I was attending the retreat for our parish councils where Father Austin Vetter was going to speak to us. We were having supper and Don Nistler was introduced me to Fr. Vetter and was telling him about me and my plans to become a deacon someday. Fr. Vetter leaned back in his chair, looked at me and asked; “why don’t you just go to seminary?” I gave him a whole list of reasons about how I thought that I was doing what God wanted me to do and how I had all these responsibilities to our farm and feedlot. Then he said; “Oh, just sell it all, become one of us it’s not so bad.” The thought never left my mind after that night. I talked to Fr. David Richter about it first, and then I had a sit down with my mom and dad. My dad told me he would support anything that I chose to do and my mom cried. We made preparations to get out of the business after I met with Fr. Tom. I attended the live-in weekend at Cardinal Muench and the rest is history.