Editor's note: "The Faith in Our Lives" is a monthly series spotlighting Catholics in various walks of life, and how they connect their faith with what they do.

The conversion experience came while Ken and Peggy Martinet were attending Marriage Encounter at St. Bede the Venerable Church in La Caņada.

He had changed jobs, and he and Peggy's marriage was not in "real good shape." A convert from Judaism, Peggy never really participated in her new-found religion. Ken had guilt-ridden feelings about that, along with the self-realization he wasn't much of a Catholic, either.

Marriage Encounter made the difference. Soon the Martinets were heading up the Marriage Encounter program themselves, mentoring couples and even organizing international conventions. Their involvement would last 25 years. With three teenage girls --- Catherine and twins Denise and Danielle --- the couple also became active in Youth Encounter, coordinating some 80 retreats over the years.

"It was great," Ken recalls with a chuckle. "We had 20 to 50 kids at our house every Friday. So we really came together and did ministry as a family. It certainly formed our spiritual life for the rest of our lives."

The Cursillo and Charismatic movements deepened their faith experience. In 1984, the couple started the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) at St. Bede's, despite initial objections from the pastor.

"So as our kids grew older," Ken says, smiling a little, "we kind of changed our ministry."

A valuable lesson

When Catherine was going to Loyola Marymount University, she took a course on death and dying. This led to the eldest daughter, along with her parents, getting trained in hospice care, which turned into another life-changing experience for the Martinets. Ken quit his job as senior vice-president and chief financial officer of a pharmaceutical company.

"Peggy and I decided that we wanted to really devote our life to ministry," he explains. "So we started our own home health agency with the hope of working with patients who were terminally ill. And we actually did do a lot of hospice for AIDS patients."

But after two years of paying their employees but not themselves --- by selling their beach house and cars, plus mortgaging their Glendale home --- they sold the home health company called St. Eligius.

Next came a brief foray into the Japanese real estate market before Ken went to work for Franciscan Communications in 1990 as a fund-raiser. Four years later, he found himself president of the struggling nonprofit. His main responsibility became overseeing its divestiture, selling off profitable assets to other video-making companies and publishing houses. "It was not a fun thing," he recollects.

But it taught him a valuable lesson.

"People in nonprofits are not well informed in terms of the work ethic of a for-profit industry," he says. "It takes business people to run them. I don't care how creative you are, if you don't have someone there to run the business side, you're not going to survive."

Again, the enterprising executive was out of work. But then in April 1995, he landed what he would come to call his best job: head of Catholic Big Brothers in Los Angeles.

As the half-Cajun French, half-Hispanic 63-year-old man leans back in his office chair, a grin breaks across his face. "I get to do something that's fabulous," he says. "This is the best job there is, honestly, because we're helping kids --- especially kids who aren't going to get help in any other way.

"Most of them have no father in their life, and they're destined for pretty dismal futures. It's not because they choose it; it's just because they don't know where to go. So we can provide them some insights, either through a Big Brother or Big Sister or through some of the activities that we have."

Big brothers and sisters

The private, nonprofit organization, founded in 1925, is today known as Catholic Big Brothers Big Sisters. And as a nonsectarian agency, affiliated with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, it serves at-risk children of all faiths. The core One-to-One Mentoring Program matches carefully screened and trained adult volunteers with mostly minority kids, ages seven to 14, from single-parent homes in Los Angeles County.

A Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing Program pairs deaf or hearing-impaired youth with adults who also have a hearing loss or who know American sign language. "High School Bigs" matches high school students with elementary students at school and after-school sites. In addition, the agency's Northwest Pasadena Mentoring Center provides after-school tutoring to children from mostly poor, Spanish-speaking families.

When Ken Martinet comes to work, he faces two crucial challenges in keeping these programs going. First, of course, is money. With California $36 billion in the red, a significant chunk of the organization's state and county funding has been cut. As a result, while Catholic Big Brothers Big Sisters was serving 4,000 kids a couple of years ago, its clientele is down to about 1,000 today. Two grants this year from the White House's faith-based initiatives, however, have buoyed the spirits of the social service agency's President/CEO. "Now we're on our way back," he reports.

The other challenge is the ongoing need for volunteers.

"People are a lot more mercenary, a lot more insecure about their careers," observes Martinet, who also chairs the archdiocese's Justice and Peace Commission. "So the time they can spend doing volunteer work is minimized. We live in a very materialistic world, and having things is important to people. Trying to break through that perception today is tough.

"We can't get enough men volunteers. Men just don't volunteer. Right now we have over 100 kids waiting for Big Brothers. Many will wait years for a match. And some of them will never be matched."

Ken turns in his office chair, pointing to a framed photograph of a young man with former President Bill Clinton. The young man is Mike Bowler, national Big Brother of the year in 2000, who has mentored seven little brothers here in Southern California.

"Most of our work is done out-of-sight by guys like Mike or our dedicated women volunteers," he says. "But when you hear back reports from the caseworker about how well their Little Brothers and Sisters are doing, you know you're making a difference in their lives.

"So this work is definitely a ministry," he adds. "Big-time."

For more information about Catholic Big Brothers Big Sisters, visit the agency's website at www.catholicbigbrothers.org or call (213) 251-9800.