But soon Makarios said he found himself at a base in San Francisco, with orders in hand for Vietnam. It is then that Makarios speaks of God's hand changing his life. "I was standing in line when this guy in uniform went to the line and counted 17 men and stopped at me, and he said, 'You guys follow me.' "

In seven days, Makarios found himself on a plane to Korea instead. In a strange twist, Makarios said it was in Seoul that his connection with the Greek Orthodox faith was strengthened. It turns out that in the 1950s the Greek Orthodox Church followed Greek soldiers to Korea and set up missions. By the time Makarios arrived, Korean converts spoke Greek and were baptized with Greek names. It was while serving the most desperate in war-torn Korea for 17 months that Makarios said he realized his calling. By giving of himself, he received spiritual reward. "You have to give to get," he said.

After graduating from Westminster College in 1972, Makarios decided to enroll in theological school in Boston. From there his choices stood before him. In the Greek Orthodox faith, clergy have a choice of becoming a priest who can marry, a celibate priest or a celibate monk.

For a man in his late 20s, making the decision to never marry and have children was not an easy one, he said. "I made the decision that I would remain celibate." It was a commitment that would also take him from a "materialistic world" to a spiritual one. "The life of a monastery is not anti-social, it's anti-societal," Makarios said. "There's a difference."

However, in the '70s there were no orthodox monasteries in the United States. "I had to find a place where there were monasteries and that was either in Greece or the Middle East," he said.

In 1976 he ended up in one of the most interesting places on Earth. Built about 1,400 years ago, St. Catherine's Monastery is the oldest, continually running Christian monastery in the world. It is situated at the foot of what is believe to be Mount Sinai, where the Bible states the prophet Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. It is also the site where Christians believe that after St. Catherine was tortured by Romans for her faith in Jesus, angels delivered her body, which was reportedly found by monks from the monastery three centuries later.

Living the monastic life in one of the hearts of Orthodox Christianity took some getting used to. "I went to a monastery where nobody spoke English. Everything was in Greek and others spoke Arabic, both inside and outside."