David Sandquist

I don’t recall having any explicit desire to be a priest when I was a kid. I was pretty sure I would get into the conservation field, or agriculture, and be married. While in college, some volunteer work at an inner-city school in Minneapolis got me interested in teaching, and I ended up getting a degree in education, and a position as a third grade teacher. I really enjoyed being a teacher, and worked a total of thirteen years at Catholic, public, and private schools, in both regular classroom and special needs settings.

Sometime during my early tears of teaching, I became attracted to the priesthood. It was a new notion, but not altogether surprising. I had a good religious upbringing, and certain life experiences thereafter seemed to have led me to the point of considering if I was possibly called to be a priest - experiences like working for the Little Sisters of the Poor just before completing college, and landing in a Catholic school as a first-year teacher. I was fortunate to have worked in such places where God was central, and where a religious life of service was exemplified, particularly by the nuns and priests with whom I was acquainted. In retrospect, I can see how these circumstances really helped me to keep close to the sacraments, and to keep me moving forward in my faith.

I remember how St. Therese of Lisieux’s autobiography, “The Story of a Soul,” caught my eye one day and prompted me to read about St. Therese, and later about other saints. I have since never tired of reading about their lives, and learning more about the faith through them. The compelling title given to St. Therese’s story has come to remind me that all of us, not just canonized saints, are in fact souls with stories - that beneath it all, everyone’s life is basically the story of a soul, for better or worse. It can be all too easy to neglect the soul, to get so busy with life’s demands or preoccupations that one’s Christian vocation goes untended to and the practice of prayer slips away. But our friends the saints show us what living in union with Christ looks like, and I’ve found that keeping in touch with them can help us respond to that same call to holiness.

A little bit more about myself: Originally from North St. Paul, where my parents still reside, I’m from a family of four children, which now includes many nieces and nephews. I attended public schools, graduated from the U of M, and later lived and worked in Stillwater just before entering the seminary. Though I’m from “the Cities,” I prefer being in the country, and when I have time off, I like spending time at my sister’s farm near Bay City. The pastimes I most enjoy are fishing, canoeing, walking, reading, and bird watching. I have favorite fishing lakes in northern Minnesota, but have lately enjoyed fishing the Chippewa and Mississippi Rivers in Wisconsin. My rural exposure has renewed my interest in birds, and I always have a binoculars handy for spotting new finds - I sort of “collect” birds. I have an actual collection though of something else - archival photos of the Lake Itasca area (source of the Mississippi, where my family

vacationed for many years). I also like to draw - particularly people portraits - and have done a few oil paintings too. The one I like best is hanging somewhere at the Breezy Point Resort and Golf Club in Minnesota. I entered Mundelein Seminary (near Chicago) a few years ago, and have two more to go. My summers away from the seminary have been spent in parishes at Ellsworth, St Mary’s Ridge Quad Parishes, and most recently, Durand/Lima/Mondovi, where I just completed my pastoral internship. I have met so many good people along the way, and I am always grateful for the moral support I’ve received from throughout the diocese. I look forward to serving the diocese one day, God willing, as a parish priest.