I just found out that my dear friend and priest, Father Alejandro, is relocating to Jerusalem. I’ve been sitting with that news for a little while now, turning it over. It’s good news for him, a new chapter, a calling pursued, Jerusalem of all places. But I’ll be honest with you. For me, it landed with a quiet weight.
Father Alejandro was the first person I truly knew in Ukraine.
I arrived here near Christmas 2025, alone, my military application still being processed, with more time on my hands than I knew what to do with. I knew nobody. I set myself one task, find a Catholic church with an English-speaking priest. There were many churches. I found one. I walked in, sat through the Mass, and when it was over I went up to him, asked for a few minutes of his time, took him to one side, and told him everything.
Just like that. A stranger and a priest, and I told him everything and right then and there, it began.
Over the weeks that followed, through my military application, through the waiting, through the uncertainty, we met again and again. I couldn’t tell you how many times. We would talk about life, about faith, about the war and what it does to people. He introduced me to others. He even tried to help me court a young woman once, a story that ultimately didn’t go the way I hoped, her parents deciding a soldier wasn’t quite what they had in mind for their daughter. But it wouldn’t have happened at all without him.
When I went into basic training, we kept calling. When I was on mission, thirty-two days out, under fire, in positions that tested everything I had, we would find moments to call. Brief ones. But he was there on the other end of the line, and we would read and pray together. A priest in Kyiv and a soldier in a bunker somewhere, doing morning prayer over a phone connection that kept cutting out.
I have a screenshot of one of those calls. I’ll never delete it. This dispatch is not really about Father Alejandro leaving. It’s about what his friendship reminded me of, something I think most of us know but rarely stop long enough to feel.
The people in your life are not permanent fixtures. They are gifts, given for a season, and the season has its own end that you don’t get to choose. One minute they are here and one minute they are not, relocated, or changed, or simply gone in ways you didn’t see coming.
Don’t take your time with them for granted. Not a single minute of it.
Tell the people you love that you love them. Have the conversation you’ve been putting off. Make the call. Show up. Be present when you’re with them rather than half somewhere else on your phone. The memory I’ll carry of Father Alejandro isn’t a grand one. It’s the small ones. The cups of coffee. The conversations that went longer than either of us planned. The prayers said together in the cold.
Those are the things that last.
To my dear friend and minister of Christ, Father Alejandro. I love you, brother. Jerusalem is lucky to have you and I will find my way there one day to prove it.
Until then, dear friend.
How you are blessed to have found such a good friend.
Wise words.