Photos by Ralph Freso
Students don't always come to Grand Canyon University with a strong faith background. But these students, who had little or no faith before college, opened the door to God – and they credit GCU for strengthening their journey.
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'The bigger the wait,
the bigger the blessing'
Jason Amador was stretching before a Grand Canyon basketball game in November 2024 when students began rushing to their seats and the arena lights hit him like an awakening.
Memories rushed over Amador about life events that guided him to being a GCU walk-on player, a blessing that followed trials of growing up in the Colorado River Indian Tribes community, losing friends and relatives, undergoing double-hip surgery and the closing of his previous college.
Amador approached assistant coach Casey Shaw amid the basketball bedlam and said, “I really want to dedicate my life to Jesus Christ.”
That weekend, the team bus parked by a campus pool before a trip to California. Players and staffers surrounded the water to watch Shaw baptize Amador.
“I realized how blessed I am to be where I am,” said Amador, now a GCU player development specialist. “It wasn’t like I was lucky to land at any school. I was lucky to land at GCU, a Christian school, and to be surrounded by God-fearing coaches.
“It took a lot of ups and downs to get here, failing over and over, being overlooked, having the door shut on me, people making promises and not fulfilling them. I wouldn’t have been able to get through everything unless it was for Jesus Christ. That’s why I dedicate my life to Him.”
Amador grew up in a Christian home near Parker, Arizona, with parents who left him to find his faith path. That was tested at the University of Saint Katherine, a tiny National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics program in San Marcos, California.
A doctor told Amador he needed to stop playing basketball because of deteriorating hips. At age 20, he elected a double-hip surgery often associated with senior citizens.
After being painfully immobile for two months, Amador re-learned to walk as four people helped him with his first step.
“I was starting from scratch, like a little baby,” Amador said.
He progressed, but the rehabilitation sidelined him for two seasons. After returning for 2023-24, an April letter to the St. Katherine student body announced the campus’s immediate closure.
Amador eventually received his kinesiology degree in the mail but was already taking his next step.
After expressing walk-on interest to GCU coach Bryce Drew at a summer camp, Amador emailed GCU Vice President of Athletics Jamie Boggs about his desire to transfer and was re-connected with coaches.
“It was her Christian heart,” Amador said. “I never thought in a million years an AD (athletic director) would read some random kid’s email.”
After five-hour round-trip drives for summer workouts, GCU included Amador on the 2024-25 conference championship team that reached the NCAA Tournament. It was a dream season for GCU and Amador, whose headband-and-ponytail look endeared him to the Havocs student section. They chanted for Drew to insert him into games, culminating with electric moments when he made a layup and a 3-pointer.
“The bigger the wait, the bigger the blessing,” Amador said. “I wouldn’t be who I am if it wasn’t for those trials and tribulations. I thank Him for that. It made me a better person and grew my faith. I put all my faith in Him.”
New horizons
Connor Vicary grew up Catholic in his hometown of Morton, Illinois. But he wasn’t strong in his faith.
“I wasn’t anti (religion). I just grew up in it, and I always nodded my head,” said Vicary, who enrolled at GCU in fall 2020.
Being on campus, Vicary noticed how faith-driven students were. “I started to look around and realized how happy these people were,” he said.
He dived into his studies as an entrepreneurship major. Adept at social media, he built a TikTok following that grew to more than 200,000 followers – a business skill that caught the eye of fellow student entrepreneur Jackson Godwin.
Vicary soon joined Jack’s Detail Garage, Godwin’s student-run auto-detailing business.
It was Godwin who opened the doors to Vicary’s faith.
He brought Vicary to his first Bible study and to his church, Pella Communities.
“For the first time in my life, I was really being challenged … and growing in my own faith. I think God put Jackson in my life to create and build out my own faith journey.”
That journey strengthened after John Kaites became dean of the Colangelo College of Business in October 2023.
Kaites told Vicary and Godwin he wanted to revitalize a church targeted for closure. That meant a new staff, including a new teaching team.
Vicary, who was still growing in his faith, told Kaites, “Jackson Godwin is your guy.” Godwin, after all, was going to seminary and wanted to be a pastor.
Godwin told Kaites he would join the church team only if Vicary would.
In addition to serving as acting director of GCU’s Canyon Ventures, which supports startup businesses, Vicary has worked for Kaites for the last two years as a youth pastor at Horizon Church in the Ahwatukee area of Phoenix.
Kaites, the church’s senior pastor, often teaches principles from his devotional, “Fear Not,” which emphasizes to put Christ in the center of your life, to love God and others, and to surrender and serve the Lord.
Once you do those things, you have nothing to fear, Kaites said.
Vicary, who graduated in 2024, has done all those things.
“God put us together in the beginning for this whole plan,” Vicary said of meeting Godwin and of getting to know Kaites and the faith-driven students at GCU. “And this whole plan couldn’t have been bigger than I imagined.”
He brought her safety
Daria Shlapak grew up in an Eastern Orthodox family in Ukraine.
They would go to church once a year for Easter, and though Shlapak was baptized as a baby, she never developed in her faith.
Instead, she committed herself to rhythmic gymnastics and spent most of her childhood and early teen years competing across the world, even making the Ukrainian junior national team. But a spine injury ended her career and forced her to embark on a new life trajectory.
Shlapak began looking at colleges in the United States, and after a family friend had recommended GCU, she was enticed by the modern campus and feasible tuition costs.
“I had never even heard of Arizona before,” Shlapak said. “I didn’t want to be in the desert because I like nature, but the campus looked very modern, and the application was really simple to fill out.”
Once the grueling visa process was complete and Shlapak had a plane ticket and an acceptance letter from GCU in her hand, she felt hope and a sense of direction.
Little did she know, God was paving the way for her to become a part of a community that would encourage her faith transformation.
“I was very stressed about not making friends. So, when my roommate asked if I wanted to go to church with her, I was like, ‘Sure, church, of course.’ But I really just wanted to spend time with her. I didn’t want to be by myself.
“I went a few times, and the messages really started to hit. It was almost like a joke, ‘Who told God my business?’ There was a song one day about trusting God with your future. That is a scary thing for me because I am very anxious. But hearing that and feeling all the power, I realized He was the one who brought me to GCU.”
At 13, Shlapak’s goal was to go to the Olympics to win a gold medal in rhythmic gymnastics for Ukraine. Her spinal injury didn’t hurt just physically, it affected her purpose and identity.
But now, Shlapak is studying business management with a goal of pursuing a career in project management and event planning that would allow her to serve people and build a joyful community. That might not have happened if she wasn't injured.
“I feel like I had to get injured for me to apply to United States, get into GCU and become a Christian. I was really hurt with everything not working out, but now I realize I was just not meant to be there. GCU was the place for me to find Christ.
“All the bad things that happened, but they weren’t bad enough for me to break. It’s really great to know that there is meaning to your life and purpose in what you are doing. There is a Savior and someone who loves you, despite everything. God is the one that brings me safety.”
A pivotal car ride
It is about 2,500 miles from Suffolk County Community College on Long Island to GCU, and Lucas Patten felt further away from his faith shortly after arriving on campus in fall 2022.
The affable Patten immediately found a group of friends, and the five climbed into a sedan and took a six-hour drive to the San Diego area.
“We're in the car and my friends were asking, on a scale of one to 10, do you think you would get into heaven right now?” Patten said. “Everyone's saying, ‘10, 10, 10.’”
When it came to Patten ranking his chances of getting into heaven, he said either a 4 or 5.
“Everyone laughed at me,” Patten said. “Because everyone knows that it's either one or 10. You're either going to heaven or not.”
That moment was a wake-up call for Patten, a winter 2024 entrepreneurship graduate and the founder and CEO of Powder Pal, a scooper for workout and protein powder.
“That’s when I kind of realized, ‘Wow, I'm kind of not understanding a lot of things,’ “Patten said. “So that's when I started really getting my Word and just getting into a better community that would help grow my faith and launch me to where I needed to be, especially with the business.”
One of Patten’s biggest building blocks in his faith was learning the importance of merging his faith into business.
“My faith and my business are just one, right?” Patten said. “So, if I didn't trust in God, I didn't have the faith, I wouldn't be here. Because when I graduated from college, I didn't have any job, I didn't have anywhere to live. I was just out here.
“I was thinking, ‘What am I doing?’ I was applying for a job, and it got to round four of interviews. It was a great job. And they called me and said, ‘I don't think you're going to have time with your business.’
“And I thought, ‘All right.’ That's a sign that I'm just going to go all in with the business.’ So that's why I did it, and it paid off.”
Building Powder Pal at GCU's business incubator, Canyon Ventures, has enabled Patten to build his faith while expanding his brand, which now includes Powder Pal collagen peptides.
He also attends Pella Communities, a multi-congregational church in Glendale.
Powder Pal’s website states its mission is to “glorify God through innovation, service and excellence" while helping customers live healthier lives. It also emphasizes that Christian faith is foundational to the business. Patten said he wants to live up to the following values: faith, excellence, integrity, stewardship, service and community.
“If you’re in your faith, have direction, a God-given purpose and are called to do something, I feel it’s easy to incorporate (religion and business),” Patten said.
Patten’s confidence was reinforced during Bible study in mid-December when members were asked one thing to think for 2026.
“I said I can confidently know what I’m supposed to be doing every single day,” Patten said. "I have a calling. I don’t have to sit there and wonder, ‘What should I do today? What should I do this year?’ I know exactly what I’m supposed to do.”
