Fr. Daniel was born in a Muslim home living with his grandfather and began attending the Mosque at 5 years of age. As he grew older, he searched for a deeper certainty of God and encountered Christ for the first time in the form of light in a vision. Confused and trembling but with unspeakable joy, the young man began to ask such questions as “Who is Jesus Christ? What is he about?” He began to see Christianity differently through the Qur’an itself, which, although denying that Christ is God, treats many points of Biblical history with reverence. He invited Christ into his heart and was baptized into Dutch Reformed Protestant Christianity – the only Church he knew at this time taking the baptismal name of Daniel. He then became very active in witnessing for Christ and he wanted to be an evangelist or missionary. Further, he desired to make the Gospel known to his own people, within the context of their culture, not as a “western-religion,” but the truth of God that originated in the Middle East/Israel, the land of all the prophets. Later as he was invited to preach among many different protestant churches, the young Daniel was bewildered by the plethora of groups and denominations with differing and opposing theological thoughts, traditions and practices. He also began to miss liturgical rhythm of life which he was used to in Islam and set his heart searching towards the ancient Christianity of the East. He knew nothing of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, rather his intuition told him that Christianity was born in the same Middle Eastern milieu as Islam and soon he embraced and was chrismated into the
Orthodox Christian Church.
