My name is Daniel Kuberek, I’m the assistant editor for Signs of the Times magazine in Australia/New Zealand. I also work on other projects at Adventist Media. I was born to Polish parents; I’m the only Aussie in my family. My parents moved here after my dad was called to be the pastor of the Polish church in Adelaide. I love sport and fitness (particularly going to the gym and soccer), but I also hectically nerd out when it comes to camera stuff. In addition to all the publication stuff at work, I do quite a bit of filming in my spare time, mainly travel stuff.
I am very passionate about capturing the experience. Everyone’s social media feeds are bombarded with things that can make people feel exhausted – especially with constant updates and rhetoric around the current pandemic. I want my creations to leave someone with positive emotions, to transport them away from reality for a little bit. Even though there are restrictions on how we can experience God’s nature (and who we can experience it with), I’ve been using my recent Youtube videos as a way of letting people do that from their living rooms.
As a Pastor’s kid, I was raised within the church. But I don’t think I truly met Jesus until I understood salvation when I was in high school. Up until that point I had convinced myself it was too difficult to attain; way out of reach. It was when my school chaplain explained it to me that I had an ‘aha’ moment. It was then that I understood grace. I decided to get baptised very shortly after that. My baptism day felt like a huge burden was lifted off my shoulders.
I don’t want to complain about the challenges in my life, I know there are people who’ve had it far worse. This is something I don’t often talk about, but our family did go through an incredibly traumatic experience when I was 10; my dad was killed in a car accident. Words can’t describe what someone goes through in that situation, only people who’ve been through something similar will understand. Through the grace of God (and quite a few miracles along the way) we were able to pick ourselves up. The pain never goes away but it does ease over time. It definitely wasn’t easy growing up as a teenager without a dad, and took a lot of time to figure things out. The whole situation has allowed me to empathise much more with people in similar ordeals. When you watch the news, the people you see crying for their loved ones won’t just ‘get over it’ in the short term – they’re feeling like their world has ended, and it’ll be a potentially years-long healing process.
But I was blessed that despite all the challenges, I had a mother who was incredibly strong in the faith. She was essentially thrown right into the deep-end with things, but clung to God and managed to pull our whole family through it.
I still get comments, even 15 years later after the accident, from people who can’t believe that our whole family is still attending and active in the Church. I’m the youngest of my brothers; my oldest brother Bart works in architecture design, and my other brother is a pastor in Mackay. I think we all have our mother’s guidance to thank for the positions we are all in right now.