ARNIE Hurdoyal and David Kruse are eager to draw people to encounter Jesus in their new roles in Evangelisation Brisbane’s adult formation team.
Mr Kruse grew up Catholic, but far away from Brisbane.
He grew up in Minnesota in the United States, a place with a cold northern climate.
“My family was Catholic, but I didn’t know Jesus,” he said.
“I went to Mass every Sunday and learned about the faith, but it wasn’t until I was a young adult that I actually encountered the real-ness of God.”
Mr Kruse was a professional musician and an entrepreneur out of high school, but went through a powerful conversion after hitting rock bottom with his “musician’s lifestyle”.
At 22, he joined the Catholic seminary and was hoping to be ordained as a priest.
“The seminary taught me how to be a Christian man,” he said.
“And it taught me how to let myself be seen by God, and to see God.”
During his time in seminary he began doing leatherwork in addition to music.
After eight years of seminary formation, as he was preparing to be ordained to the diaconate, he felt God was calling him to be at the service of the Church outside of the priesthood and to offer his gifts of art and music to the world.
He left in 2020 and began a Catholic company call OreMoose Catholic Leatherwork.
The mission and strategic plan of Evangelisation Brisbane, as well as his fiancée, led him to move to Australia in January 2022.
“I am enjoying the work of evangelisation in this country and I hope that it’s fruitful,” he said.
Mr Hurdoyal, who has written movie reviews and stories for The Catholic Leader, had also grown up Catholic but had resisted going to Mass in his teenage years.
His family moved from Mauritius to Melbourne when he was a teenager and he experienced some difficulty around the transition.
“Our family was living separately for a few months and I was enduring bullying and harassment at school,” he said.
“My father knew about a youth group that had just begun in the local parish known as ‘Life Teen’ and encouraged me to go.
“Despite my reluctance, I did, and I enjoyed it.”
This was the birth of Mr Hurdoyal’s faith life, which matured over years of continuous experiences.
He felt called to more as he prayed for a deepening to his faith life.
His prayer was answered through Alpha, a ministry that evangelises and teaches the central aspects of the faith.
“On the weekend retreat of the course, I had a real and deep encounter with God through the Holy Spirit and faith was made real for me then,” he said.
“This was polarised with the struggle of being a young adult at university in a heavy party scene and somewhat feeling lost in regards to my direction in life.”
Mr Hurdoyal’s continuous openness to God’s will for his life bore fruit and, after a few more experiences, solidified his conviction to follow God’s call.
This led him to volunteering with the National Evangelisation Team and spending two years as a full time missionary.
This experience of doing God’s will launched him into a life led and filled by the Spirit, he said.
Mr Hurdoyal is now married with two children and begun his work with the Archdiocese of Brisbane in April 2022.
“I have heard this phrase: ‘God never wants to leave us where we are’ multiple times in life,” he said.
“This reminds me to be humble when given the opportunity to learn and grow but also moves me forwards to guide those around me towards those opportunities as well.”
To find out more about EB’s adult formation team head to https://evangelisationbrisbane.org.au/adultformation/.
