Thomas Awiapo

How Thomas Awiapo found CRS

The priests from St. Francis Xavier parish could sense that Thomas was special. He would paint the inside of the church and cut the brambles around it. He became an expert at washing and ironing cassocks. They paid him for this. They also gave him shoes and t-shirts. They became father figures for Thomas, and soon he came to believe what he heard at church about men named Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, and turned away from the traditional beliefs that he grew up with.

After he graduated from high school, and against his family's wishes, Thomas enrolled in the seminary.

"I went there as a way of thanking God," he says.

He formed deep friendships with the other priests. He loved the preaching and the parishioners. During the homily, Thomas regaled the congregation with that soaring voice and his electric personality. "Fellow Christians, fellow lovers of Our Lord Jesus Christ," he'd boom. They opened their souls and let Thomas fill them with the good word.

But after six years, he made the difficult decision not to go into the priesthood. He had met a woman who was gentle and soft-spoken as she organized church outreach activities. Felicia, he soon realized, was someone he couldn't live without.

He and Felicia married and started a family. Thomas enrolled at Legon University in Accra, the capital of Ghana, where he studied philosophy and religion. He then earned a post-graduate teaching degree from Cape Coast University and, later with a scholarship, a master's in public administration from California State University, Hayward. For a time, he settled into teaching high school history, something he thinks he may return to someday.