My dear faithful readers,

I started to write my memoirs at the 5th anniversary of my episcopate and over the years worked on them a little at a time hoping now to finish them this fall after starting some fifteen years ago. Milestones are always significant and this year marks the 50th anniversary of my ordination August 9, 1970.

Formation is one of the three parts in my memoirs and so I’m going to give a condensed version of who I am and some of what I have done and ask you to pretend like this is interesting when you see me.

My dear faithful readers,

I started to write my memoirs at the 5th anniversary of my episcopate and over the years worked on them a little at a time hoping now to finish them this fall after starting some fifteen years ago. Milestones are always significant and this year marks the 50th anniversary of my ordination August 9, 1970.

Formation is one of the three parts in my memoirs and so I’m going to give a condensed version of who I am and some of what I have done and ask you to pretend like this is interesting when you see me.

I was born in Butte, Montana April 9, 1949 to Nikola and Vera Grace Soraich.

My father arrived in America in 1909 at age 16 after a month in the hull of a cargo ship from the Austro-Hungarian province of Hercegovina. He was processed through Ellis Island as was normal for people coming to this country and then remained here until his death in 1981. He worked a number of jobs in a number of places, Chicago, Wyoming and finally in Montana but his main occupation was a miner both coal and copper retiring after 40 years with many health issues.

He told me the story that he’d hang onto the tail of his uncle’s (mother’s brother was a priest) horse and go with him visiting parishioners and singing the responses for the services and later as a priest, myself, he did the same for me with a crystal-clear tenor voice. All of his life he was a pious and faithful Orthodox of Serbian decent. His oldest brother Sava paid for his trip here so that he could earn some money and return home, home was America he never returned. He was the youngest of five children. One of his sisters, Ilinka, was killed by the Ustashi while she was pregnant.

My Mother was born in Butte and her parents came from the area between Montenegro and Hercegovina. She was the second youngest of nine children and she too was a pious Orthodox Christian working hard for the church all her life. She was diagnosed with cancer at age 47 and five years later died from this disease by which we have all been touched in some way or another. She became a janitress in the elementary school I attended working four hours a day to help with our family needs after my father retired. My parents never had a credit card or a loan.

The first church in Butte, Holy Trinity, was consecrated by St. Tikhon in 1905 and a new one later built and consecrated in 1965 after underground mining caused the old one to be condemned. There is a nice photo of the old one outside my office.

I was an altar server, loved ice skating, played basketball and wrestled in high school, was a member of the Young American Serbs a folk group in the parish and graduated from high school in Butte.

My first job was in a hardware store for $1.00 an hour, then my senior year of high school and first year in Seminary I worked for Skaggs Drug. The next two years I worked on what was called Model Cities, a program for families with low income, we were what you’d call today, poor but didn’t know it.

I have a brother and a sister both younger and they have children of their own and still live in Montana.

I attended seminary in Johnstown, PA for five years after high school.

During my third year my Mother’s cancer returned fiercer than when she had surgery five years earlier.

During my visit at Christmas my Mother was told she has less than six months to live which was devastating to all of us. When I returned home for the summer, I was the one who administered her pain shots in the middle of the night; she would never wake me in her pain I just knew somehow, she needed it and I woke up to help.

This summer with the blessing of my spiritual father and support from my parish priest I petitioned my Bishop Gregory for tonsure to monasticism and ordination to the diaconate. My spiritual Father, priest in the parish and the bishop all knew me for most of my life so this was not something out of the ordinary.

The Holy Bishops Assembly of the Serbian Orthodox Church decided to hold their synod meeting in Butte, Montana on the Feast of St. Panteleimon where I’d be tonsured to monasticism and ordained to the holy diaconate and this is the beginning of part II.