SUNDRE — A new pastor at the local Lutheran Church knew in his heart from the time he was very little that his calling was to become a preacher.
“Since I was six years old, I wanted to be a pastor,” said Randy Fiege, now 62, who started his position in January following roughly eight years serving his church in Nipawin, Sask.
“Ministry is a calling — it’s like being a farmer. You’re born to it, or you’re not,” said Fiege, who is originally from Saskatchewan but largely pursued his education and lived much of his life in Alberta.
Only a number of years after deciding what he wanted to do, his family inadvertently discovered Sundre during a road trip. He instantly fell in love with the community, adding to his bucket list at a young age the goal of one day living here.
His father would take the family on a trip from Viceroy, Sask. with their Pontiac and a tent trailer in tow, driving north several kilometres before flipping a coin.
“Heads we’re going to the mountains, tails we’re going east. We never went east. Ever,“ said Fiege, adding they visited iconic Rocky Mountain vistas such as Banff and Jasper.
On that particular trip, the original plan was to return home through Edmonton.
“But my dad decided, in a very adventurous way, that he was going to take the (forestry) trunk road south so we could explore. And we ended up, somehow, in Sundre,” he said.
“We camped by the river, and I remember thinking it was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen in my life. There were guys on horses and there was a tying post in front of a bar in town. I think there were three or four horses tied to the post, and it was like a little boy's dream world — cowboys everywhere,” he fondly recalled.
A couple of years later, he heard a eulogy during a funeral service for a man from his community that had never ventured very far away from home, and decided that was tragic.
So, upon returning home that day, he promptly proceeded to write down 10 things he wanted to accomplish in life.
“Number 10 was that I would one day live in Sundre,” he said.
“Sundre has been a goal since I was 12 years old.”
When he later in life eventually got a call many years ago to serve as a pastor in Dickson, a community he called home for about 16 years, Fiege thought it was so close to Sundre that it “was the Lord’s answer to my 12-year-old bucket list. But it wasn’t — this now is,” he said about getting the call to come to Sundre.
This latest chapter, he added, will be the final one.
“This is the end of my career. This will be my last church. And it’s also the fulfillment of where it all started for me as a little boy.”
He and wife Valerie, a kindergarten teacher who will join him after finishing the semester, have been looking for a home.
“She brings her gifts as well,” he said, adding the couple intend to be active in the community.
“I’d like to get involved with coaching baseball.”
With experience in counselling, he said family and individual sessions are available free of charge through the congregation.
“I have an extensive background in that area,” said Feige, who for five years was one of five executive directors at Colony Farms, a forensic psychiatric facility in B.C.
Along the way, he studied at a number of post-secondary institutions including but not limited to Augustana College in Camrose, formerly a Lutheran college, Red Deer College, where he sang in a choir with KD Lang, as well as some courses at the universities of Calgary, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Simon Fraser.
Asked what the most difficult part of walking his path is, he said, “The most challenging thing is the sad stories, it’s the hurt.”
From those who are very ill to those who are lonely, or the marriages that break and worst of all, when children are injured or worse, killed, the road he’s travelled has often been tough.
“I’ve buried so many children in my life. That’s the hardest part of the job," he said.
But the calling can also be rewarding.
“When you’re preaching on Sunday morning, and you look out and everyone is into it — everyone is listening, people are being responsive to what you’re saying or someone stands up and tells their story, and you’re moved,” is what makes the effort worthwhile, he said.
“I’ve seen the hand of God moving in someone’s life, changing lives," he said.
He and Valerie have a son and daughter together, two grandchildren as well as a third on the way.
A self-professed redneck, Fiege said that aside from golf, which he looks forward to getting back into once his knees recover, he enjoys target shooting with a preference for pistols and plans to renew his membership with the Red Deer Shooting Club.
“The first time I shot a handgun, I didn’t even hit the target — let alone anything on the target,” he said, with a chuckle.
“And it was a big target — it was like a four-foot by 2.5-foot target!”
However, he favours firing at inanimate objects.
“I’m not a hunter. I don’t like killing things,” he said.
“If you’re a gopher or magpie, then you should quiver in my presence. But other than that, you’re pretty safe.”
