“Mayday! Mayday!” the pilot radioed frantically, using the Cessna's call sign. “Foxtrot Papa Papa Juliet. We're going down, we're going down, can anybody hear us?” I sat in the co-pilot's seat and watched the willows whip past me. Our plane was about to crash on a frozen lake deep in the northern Manitoba woods and we were certain we were going to die.

On the Run
I was born in the small farming community of Porcupine Plains, Sask. My family was Ukrainian Catholic,
and I'd always felt comfortable in church—I was an altar boy for 12 years and even attended a Catholic seminary. When I was 16, I felt a calling from God to go into full-time ministry but I turned my back on that and, instead, left the seminary.

Truth to tell, becoming a priest was the furthest thing from my mind. I wanted to get married and have children. I wanted a great job with everything money could buy.

I married my wife, Tracy, a member of The Salvation Army who worked at a pediatric clinic, and I became a sales supervisor for a large soft-drink company. I loved my job and was good at it. I'd work 16-hour days building up my sales area, driving the northern Manitoba roads to remote communities.

I now realize I was running away from God, and I thought I had succeeded.

“Do My Work”
But something happened on one of my sales trips. I was at the local hockey arena and went to the washroom. There, on the wall, someone had taken a permanent marker and drawn a crude life-sized stick figure of Jesus on a fiery cross, a crow on His shoulder.

It was a very disturbing image, so much so that I was compelled to try to remove it from the wall before any children walked in. There I was, soap and paper towels in hand, scrambling to wipe away the offending images. I scrubbed and scrubbed but while I was able to eliminate the stick man, the crow and the flames, I couldn't get that cross off the wall.

As I stood back and tried to figure out why not, it hit me: My whole life, I had seen Jesus dead on the cross, but He wasn't. He'd risen. Jesus was alive! And He was here!

As I drove home, I felt the Holy Spirit say, “Is storing up for yourself treasures on earth the best you can do with the gifts and abilities that I have given you? Come do My work.”

Was God calling me a second time?

Career Change
“You'll never believe what happened to me,” I told my wife as I burst through the door of our home. “God spoke to me!” I told her the entire story. “And He told me I needed to do two years of training.”

At that, Tracy started sobbing tears of joy.

“My whole life,” she replied, “I'd felt a calling from God to be a Salvation Army pastor”—referring to the two-year training course—“and this confirms to me what I've always felt. God's telling you we need to go into full-time ministry.”

Once the excitement died down, though, I had second thoughts. “Maybe He just wants me to get more involved with our church. Maybe I need a career change,” I reasoned.

I started to participate more in church activities, and I became a salesman for an office-equipment supply company that serviced northern communities by plane.

That's how I found myself in a Cessna, plunging onto a deserted lake in the dead of winter.

God is My Co-Pilot
A pilot colleague and I were returning from a conference in Dryden, Ont., one cold Sunday morning. Below was nothing but bush, lake and forest.

About halfway into the trip, we started to experience an ice build-up around the carburetor. The pilot went through the routine de-icing procedures but despite all of his efforts, the engine couldn't gain full speed, and our plane started falling.

“What's wrong?” I asked the pilot.

“I can't get the engine up,” he replied, a worried look on his face. The plane's nose started lowering.

Faster and faster we descended. I could hear the pine trees scraping the bottom of the plane.

And yet, through all this, any fear I had passed and I felt an amazing calmness and peace about the situation. I knew that Jesus was a part of my life and that He wouldn't forsake me.

Alive!
Our right wing hit a tree, bending it back and jamming the flaps. Despite that, the pilot managed to keep the Cessna steady as it ploughed over the tops of the trees and the bush surrounding a frozen lake. A powder of snow and broken branches greeted our crash landing as we were jostled about, the plane's sturdy wheels slowing our skid.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only seconds, the Cessna ground to a halt. I looked at the pilot, he looked at me, and we high-fived one another. We were alive. And that was all that mattered.

One More Chance
Though no one knew where we were, we were dressed warmly, neither of us were injured and our plane's black box was sending out our location. Between that and our distress calls, we were located in the late evening by a search-and-rescue helicopter.

I was reunited with my wife, who'd been sick with worry when my company had informed her our plane had gone down. Together we tried to make some sense of what had happened.

Why had God spared my life? Had I received a third chance to do what I should have twice before? Was there more that God wanted me to do for Him than simply attend church?

“I think it's time that you surrendered to God's will,” Tracy reasoned.

“You're right,” I said. “First it was the calling at school, then it was the arena drawing and now this plane crash. I don't want to see what's next!”

I was joking, of course. I had become a member of The Salvation Army—indeed, Tracy and I were married in an Army church—not out of fear but out of a genuine love of God. I knew that I had been called to the ministry and it was only my natural stubbornness—the stubbornness that had made me such a good salesman—that had kept me from answering that call to its logical conclusion.

Tracy and I entered The Salvation Army's College for Officer Training in 1998, and have since served in Essex, Ont., Richmond, B.C., Toronto and Belleville, Ont. We've never been happier, or more fulfilled.

The plane crash made me realize what I needed to do—something I should have done a long time ago.