Dan Griebenow has group rooting for his recovery

By Chris Barge, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Monday, December 10, 2007

Family and friends of Dan Griebenow filed into Denver Health Medical Center on Sunday with sleeping bags and Gatorade, preparing to hold a vigil for the man who had miraculously survived a bullet to the neck.

The 24-year-old evangelical missionary was in critical but stable condition after a gunman shot him at Youth With a Mission in Arvada. He was scheduled for surgery on Tuesday.

His younger sister, Becky Griebenow, said her jaw dropped when she got the news at 5 a.m. Sunday. She said the overwhelming support her brother has received from well-wishers around the country and as far away as Amsterdam shows his strong character.

"He's just amazing," she said, tearing up outside the hospital. "There's no one like him."

She described her brother as a snowboarding missionary to young people.

Dan Griebenow sang - or, rather, screamed - in a Christian heavy metal band in South Dakota before signing up for a Boarders' Discipleship Training School at the Youth With a Mission center in Arvada two years ago.

During the 20-week program, he snowboarded at Breckenridge, lived and worked at the Arvada training center, and spent seven weeks building a playground in Bosnia and handing skateboards out to needy kids in Torino, Italy, according to information from the YWAM Web site, his My space.com blog, and his friend, Jon Bates.

"He just has kind of a heart for people," Bates said. "Everywhere you go, someone knows him."

Griebenow's Myspace entries show he took to his new life as a missionary with a mixture of passion and longing for his family, friends and band back home.

"Man, that was a good time," he wrote of his days as a Christian rocker with his band, Burns the Retina. "i miss playing shows and screaming into mics, maybe i should just start another band."

He also wrote that his best friend is Jesus.

He became a YWAM staff member at the beginning of this year.

He and Tiffany Johnson, 26 - another new YWAM staff member who was killed by the gunman early Sunday - began dating about six months ago, according to Carla Macynski, a close family friend of Johnson's parents.

In September, Johnson's father and stepmother flew to Colorado from their home outside Minneapolis to see their daughter and to meet Griebenow.

"They thought he was a very intelligent, well-spoken young man," Macynski said.

Griebenow's sister called Johnson a "beautiful spirit" who "will be horribly missed."

She also called the support for her brother "phenomenal."

"There are so many people behind him, backing him up and praying for him and praying for everyone that was involved," she said. "And I think what he would really want everyone to know at this point is, no matter what you go through, you can get through it, and he's going to get through it."