Dusan Kljaic, MTS in Pentecostal Studies - Graduate, 2010

By the way, Dusan is a 7th degree black belt in Karate, which makes him the one of the most powerful pentecostals on the planet.

Dusan called me in Dec 2006 and said he wanted to come to see me. It took him over 1.5 hours to get to the church by transit and he was early. He told me he had a dream to begin a seminary in his home country of Serbia. He wanted to attend seminary, but he thought he might be too old. Little did I know how far he had actually come to get to the seminary office.

Though raised by parents who were atheists in communist Yugoslavia, and brainwashed in school that there was no God, Dusan wondered if they were right. While serving his two years of mandatory military service in the Serbian militia, he was witnessed to a number of times by other soldiers. One day he prayed, “God if you exist, reveal yourself to me.” Returning home at the end of his term, he discovered his mother was attending a pentecostal church. It was a sign, and Dusan would soon meet Jesus.

Dusan would go on to study at a seminary in Croatia run by Peter Kuzmich, and then serve in missions work in Montenegro.
When the conflict in the Balkans broke out in 1991, he reported to the military conscription office in his hometown, and told them: “If you call me, I will come. But I am a priest and I will not kill.” They didn’t call him.

But Canada did. In 2002 he arrived in Toronto to pastor the Yugoslavian Pentecostal Church at Queensway Cathedral, and four years later he was sitting in my office.

Dusan had challenges – age really wasn’t the problem. The language challenge was huge. The first few classes didn’t go very well. I wondered if I should talk to him about quitting. But since he was a black belt in Karate, I decided to keep my thoughts to myself.
But Dusan was determined. He determined never to miss a class and never to be late for one. He never was. He worked construction to make ends meet. He persevered. Dusan is now one step closer to his dream.