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22 AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2025 | DENVER CATHOLIC Deacon Abram Leon Home Parish: Annunciation, Denver Assigned to: St. Cajetan, Denver One day, I opened the door of my heart to Jesus. I experienced his love, and it changed my life. He invited me to follow him, and I fell in love. He has been the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I want to love and serve him always. Deacon Tom Middleton Home Parish: Our Lady of the Pines, Conifer Assigned to: Our Lady of the Pines, Conifer I grew up as a Protestant, and at 19 received a calling into the ministry, I thought, to be a pastor of a church. At 29, I was recruited to work as a missionary serving in Europe with my family. Ten years ago, while doing my doctoral studies in missiology at a Protestant seminary, during prayer, God invited me to go down to the local Catholic Church to pray. Upon arrival, the priest, Father Tim Gaines, invited me to join a new class that had formed, led by the late Deacon Jerry Kotas. The class watched and discussed then-Father Robert Barron's PBS documentary, Catholicism. Father Tim, Deacon Jerry and Deacon Ron Roderick graciously guided me into the Church while accepting and encouraging my evangelism ministry overseas. When Deacon Jerry passed away a year later, I began to sense God was potentially inviting me to pick up where he left off. As I discerned the diaconate, the most consistently compelling sense I'd received that this is God's calling was when I read in the Catechism that the diaconate is a calling unto the ministry, not the priesthood. The Lord had actually called me at 19 when I was a Protestant, and he led me through 23 years of Protestant ministry into the Catholic Church, and another ten years as a Catholic missionary to prepare me for his deepest calling on my life, to sacramentally image Christ the Servant of All. How could I seek any other life than that which the creator of the universe was clearly inviting me into? 22 AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2025 | DENVER CATHOLIC He has been the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I want to love and serve him always." DCN. ABRAM LEON SCAN THE QR CODE FOR MORE ON THE ORDINATIONS, INCLUDING PHOTOS!