Most people have formative experiences that go on to shape their spirituality.

Few, however, can claim to have been personally influenced by Mother Teresa.

The Rev. Sam Mason can.

Mason, who recently became assistant to the rector at Trinity Episcopal Church, 1011 Vt., spent four months when he was in his early 20s volunteering to work with Calcutta’s poor and dying, alongside the nun who has since been beatified by the Catholic Church.

“I was a goofy, country bumpkin when I met her. I bent over and said, ‘Hi, I’m Sam Mason from Baldwin, Kansas, and I’m here to help.’ And she said, ‘Well, that’s nice,’ and patted my cheek,” says Mason, 37.

Mason was in India at the end of 1989 and the early months of 1990, witnessing the kindness extended to those who sought end-of-life care from the Sisters of Charity, the religious order founded by Mother Teresa.

The experience changed him, propelling Mason along the path toward becoming an Episcopal priest.

“You kind of have to walk the walk if you’re going to talk the talk. I realized I was a very good Episcopalian but a lousy Christian. I had a really juvenile faith,” Mason says of his early 20s.

“I realized I had to mature in my walk with God and start believing the things I was professing.”

Mason, who grew up attending Trinity Episcopal Church with his family, went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Kansas University in 1993 and a master’s of divinity from the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, in 2001.

THE REV. SAM MASON, assistant to the rector at Trinity Episcopal Church, 1011 Vt., worked alongside Mother Teresa in 1989 and 1990. Above, Mason holds a photograph of Mother Teresa that was taken by his father, Gary Mason, a longtime professor of photography at Kansas University.

He began his ministry at the downtown Lawrence church July 1.

Previously, Mason was curate for one year at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Wichita and then assistant to the rector at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Mo.

The opportunity to travel to India and volunteer to work with Mother Teresa’s religious order came about because of Mason’s father, Gary Mason.

The elder Mason was a professor of photography for 30 years at KU’s William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

For many years, he photographed U.S. presidents whenever he would travel in Kansas and Missouri, for the Associated Press and United Press International.

Gary Mason was asked by Mother Teresa to come to India in 1988 to shoot photos of her last group of novices in Calcutta. After two or three weeks, he ended up putting aside his camera and helping the nuns tend to the sick and the dying.

“It overwhelmed him and changed his life,” Sam Mason says. “It rejuvenated him as a Christian. He decided to take me (to India).”

Gary Mason retired from KU in the early 1990s and lives in Emporia. His son recently moved to Lawrence from Olathe to start his ministry at Trinity Episcopal Church.

The “need to help people” prompted Sam to become an Episcopal priest.

“I wanted to make a difference in my church and in people’s lives through God,” Sam says. “I want to be a family priest that people can call for personal and spiritual help.”

Serving at Trinity Episcopal Church feels like coming home, he adds.

“This is where I grew up,” he says. “I’m giving Communion to my old Sunday school teachers. I discovered God in this church.”