For Tomasz Juszczak, patience and trust in the Lord has been key in keeping a 14-year-long calling alive.
The Liverpool local wanted to begin a ministry for youth evangelisation since 2008 when he was inspired at a talk by US-based Catholic speakers Jason Evert and Christopher West.
Now Tomasz is seeing the fruits of that faith as he prepares to launch his very own Donum Ministries at a dinner with Evert as a special guest on 21 May.
“Donum Ministries is born from a desire to share Christ’s message of living a free, complete and joy-filled life,” says Tomasz.
“It’s not in seeking self-gratification, physical pleasure, wealth, possessions, esteem or power, like the culture often leads us to believe.
“Rather, it is in recognising our deepest identity in Christ and embracing his call to lay down our lives and become a sincere gift of self.
“This ministry exists to help people embrace that call.”
Moving with his family from Poland to Australia at just three years of age, Tomasz grew up a self-professed cradle Catholic.
Like so many young men today, Tomasz spent his teens and early 20s never having a genuine relationship with God.
That all changed at Sydney’s World Youth Day where an encounter with a number of American speakers ignited his desire to learn more about the faith, which in turn, brought him closer to God.
Later, as a core member of his parish’s Antioch youth group, Tomasz felt called to make his first leap of faith.
He quit his job and undergraduate studies in exercise physiology in favour of studying theology—without any idea of what he was going to do with his degree.
He followed it with a Master of Arts (Theological Studies) at the University of Notre Dame while working as a youth minister at John the Baptist parish, Bonnyrigg.
Tomasz says he faithfully followed the Lord’s will wherever it led him, eventually moving his wife Sarah and young family from Sydney to Hobart where he was director of the Office of Youth Evangelisation.
“In Tassie, I worked closely with the schools, and this was a highlight of my time there,” he said.
“I got to organise opportunities for the high school students to encounter the Lord, sharing with those kids some of the things I wished I heard when I was their age.
“After three years in Tasmania, I came back to Sydney as the director of evangelisation at Broken Bay for two years before God opened the doors for me to start Donum Ministries.”
Though moments of hardship made it seem like his ministry would be forever a distant dream, in hindsight, Tomasz now sees that God was preparing him for it all this time.
“A lot of what I do is share my own story with others in the hope that they too can recognise in their own lives that only a relationship with Jesus can satisfy the deep desires of their hearts,” says Tomasz.
“Particularly with young men, who have little expected of them and find themselves falling into the moulds of perpetual adolescence, that mentality of ‘boys will be boys’ and ‘toxic masculinity’.
“And what I’ve seen and experienced is that they sincerely want to be challenged to rise up and be the men God is calling them to be.
“When we recognise that we are made for God, and our desires are intended to lead us to him, and we start living accordingly – there’s really no other way you would ever want to live.”
Both Tomasz and wife Sarah hope that all those that they have contact with through their ministry will leave with a deeper desire to come closer to Jesus.
“In the end, that is my goal with this apostolate,” says Tomasz, “that more people know, love and want to serve Jesus.”
Currently, Donum Ministries offer talks for teens and adults while facilitating reflection days for Years 9-12 in either a co-ed or all-boys setting.
For more information go to donumministries.com or email [email protected].
To book for the event, please follow the link.