Three years ago, Greg Thomas told his family to start planning his funeral. Diagnosed with stage four cancer, he began taking long walks in the country around his home in Montgomery, Minnesota … alone with his dog and his thoughts.

One day, a sort of spiritual serendipity led him to a little church which had been built in 1868 by Czech settlers, but abandoned for the last 100 years. Thomas would have loved to go inside, but the doors to the old Catholic church were locked tight.

"I tried it more than once," he says. But the church was always locked. Its foundations were crumbling, the paint peeling, but it was there on the church steps, a man crumbling himself began to pray.

Eventually, Thomas contacted the foundation responsible for the upkeep of the church cemetery, telling them he wanted to repair the church. The foundation called Thomas' offer "a godsend."

Today, as Thomas works, he also prays inside the church.

"There's been a lot of tears shed on these [church] steps, and they've been tears of joy, tears of pain, but tears of blessings too."