Two former Beloved in the Desert Service Corps members, Alexander Swain and Samantha Christopher, will be ordained to the Sacred Order of Deacons in the Episcopal Church at 10:00am tomorrow, Saturday, January 25.

All are heartily invited to attend and celebrate this occasion with them at Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix. The service will also be live-streamed on the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona’s Youtube webpage.

Alex Swain is a Saint Philip’s parishioner currently in his third year of study at Virginia Theological Seminary. The last few years have been busy for Alex. He has completed two years of seminary study (which included a summer of Clinical Pastoral Education), was his class Chaplain during that time, served as the Seminarian at Christ Church, Georgetown, and worked as a Parish Administrator at St. Alban’s, Annandale (Virginia).

As absorbing as all that has been, Alex considers his wedding to Alex Martinez on May 25, 2025, to be the most exciting event of the past two years. The couple plans to move back to Arizona in May or June of this year where Alex will begin his ministry in the Diocese of Arizona. Both look forward to their next chapter.

Two former Beloved in the Desert Service Corps members, Alexander Swain and Samantha Christopher, will be ordained at 10:00am tomorrow, Saturday, January 25.

Samantha Christopher is currently serving as a seminarian at St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church, a historic Anglo-Catholic parish in New York City. She interned at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in the summer of 2023. During the 2023-2024 school year, Sam served as seminarian at Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven, and as a chapel minister at Berkeley.

After seminary, Sam hopes to return to Arizona for the beginning of her ministry. She recently became engaged to her fiancé, Hyacinth, a substitute teacher in the Hamden school district.