Priest Peter Runyon

Father Peter and Matushka Sophia Runyon met each other in Redding, CA when they were teenagers and were married before their 20th birthday. Both were raised as Protestants but were unable to find a church that seemed right. By the grace of God, they visited St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Redding, CA on the feast of Pentecost in the year 2000. After experiencing their first Divine Liturgy and the Vespers of Pentecost, they knew they had found their home. They were received into the Church with their three children Annastacia, Elias, and Nicholas.

Both Father and Matushka remained active in the parishes they attended having both been members of parish councils and singers in the choir. Father Peter began his work in Information Technology in 1998, and it was this work that led them to leave Redding and move to Plano, Texas in 2006 with his family. Once there, they began to regularly attend St. Sava's Orthodox Church. Matushka Sophia worked diligently homeschooling their three children while Father Peter obtained his undergraduates degree in Management of Information Systems and progressed in his career. Father Peter was made a subdeacon in January of 2011 and then a Deacon in July of 2014 after completing the Diaconal Vocations Program.

During their time at St. Sava's, they helped the parish move onto land the parish had purchased and into a temporary building. They actively helped the parish survive the loss of their parish priest in the middle of a capital campaign to build their temple. After years of laboring with the other faithful at St. Sava's, the new temple was finished in December of 2018 shortly after Father and Matushka left for seminary. They were able to return in January of 2019 to finally worship in the temple they had worked so hard to see built.

In 2017, with their youngest child about to graduate from high school, they began to wonder what the next chapter of their lives would be like. Father Peter worked as the Assistant Vice President of Information Technology for a financial holdings company in Dallas. His peers encouraged him to earn his MBA, but his heart was still at Church. Matushka began studying medicine and became a certified medical assistant, her heart also firmly planted in the Church. After a pilgrimage to Spruce Island to venerate the relics of their family Saint Herman of Alaska in the summer of 2017, they decided to pursue a blessing to attend Seminary.

With the blessing of Archbishop Alexander Golitzin, they moved to New York and began attending St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in August of 2018. Their youngest moved to St. Vladimir's with them to help them settle into their new lives. He moved back to Dallas in the spring of 2019 to continue the life he had already begun there. It was that semester that both Father and Matushka discerned the calling to the priesthood.

With the blessing of His Beatitude Tikhon, Father Peter was ordained to the presbyterate November 1st of 2020 by His Grace Alexei Trader (now the bishop of Sitka and all Alaska). Father Peter asked the blessing from His Eminence Alexander to transfer to the Diocese of the West so that he might be closer to his ailing parents. He was canonically transferred to the Diocese of the West with the blessing of both Archbishop Alexander and Archbishop Benjamin. His Eminence Benjamin assigned Father Peter to Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Mission June of 2024.

Father and Matushka have three adult children and three grandchildren.