Living the faith

Evan Baker, a mission advancement officer at University of Mary, had gone too far one evening at the dinner table. 
 
“That’s it!” his wife, Cassandra, a Montessori guide at Christ the King School in Mandan announced when she looked down at the plate he handed her for supper— a smorgasbord of eggs, guacamole, spaghetti sauce in a tortilla shell with cheese on top.
 
“I was trying to get rid of leftovers,” Evan said, in his defense. “But I guess it was beyond reasonable and beyond edible.”
 
Cassandra pulled out her phone right there in the kitchen and recommended Evan for the reality television series, Worst Cooks in America. It was a national cooking show she occasionally watched with the twist that people had to be nominated by someone who thought they deserved to be counted among the worst cooks in the country. 
 
Evan was not really insulted, he admitted, acknowledging that cooking is not his forte. But was he one of the worst cooks? In February of 2020, Evan had been chosen, thereby confirming his wife’s prognosis. There were interviews and a final cooking demo that Evan had to record and send to the judges. 
 
“I bought steak, asparagus and baked potatoes and had to create a dish out of it,” he recalled. “I wanted to appear that I knew something, but it was a comedy of errors that included pans falling out of the cupboard.”  
 
Predictably, he made the cut of 14 from out of 11,000 applicants.
 
The competition involved people getting dismissed after each round. Evan made it to the fourth episode. 
 
“It had been two weeks, and I took a week of unpaid leave, so I was ready to go home,” he explained. “I was so much less skilled than the others, it would have been difficult to go on. The premise is to go from zero to hero.”
 
After making dishes in just half-an-hour such as beef burgundy, a Jamaican jerked chicken, donuts and a Japanese Bento box, Evan met his match: sausage. 
 
“Everything else was replication at that point and this was improvisation,” he said. “I had to create my own. Knowing so many people from Emmons County where making sausage is a staple, I should have paid better attention. When I saw the sausage set up, I thought, I’m doomed.”
 
But those two weeks were not wasted, according to him. He made friends from different walks of life that he otherwise would never have encountered. Evan stayed in touch with them via social media and even received Christmas cards from some. 
 
Just when one might think Evan’s celebrity status was put on hiatus, along came a game show called Lucky 13. When the show was planning their first season, a casting agent reached out to Evan whom she remembered from the cooking show. Lucky 13 is a show where contestants answer 13 true or false questions and then guess how many they got right. It is co-hosted by retired NBA star, Shaquille O'Neal, and actress, Gina Rodriguez. 
 
The agent asked Evan if he was good at trivia. “My friends say I know a lot of random information,” he told her. There was a practice round on the phone and Evan was chosen from 800 other applicants to be on the show this past June. Each episode lasts one hour with two contestants each given 30 minutes. Cassandra flew out to Las Vegas to be in the audience.
 
At one point, Evan tried to quote St. Joan of Arc, saying “I was born for this,” and it was made into a meme for the show.  
 
Contestants are asked 13 true or false questions but aren't immediately told which answers are correct. Instead, they must choose a “lucky range” that they think contains the number of answers they got right which has a cash value if they are correct. Choices are: 1–3 - $5,000; 4–6 - $15,000; 7–9 - $25,000; 10–12 - $100,000 and 13 - $1,000,000.
 
Evan got 12 of his 13 questions correct but he only predicted he would fall in the
4-6 range. Half-way through revealing the answers, he got an offer for $9,750 to give up. He accepted rather than risk going home with nothing, which is exactly what would have happened since he picked the incorrect range. 
 
Some of the questions he knew because of his Catholic faith. One stated that the only piece of his art that Michaelangelo signed was the Pieta. 
 
“I knew that from seeing the Pieta while being a chaperone on the high school pilgrimage [to Rome],” he said. Another question was about All Hallows Eve for Halloween. “They asked me if hallow meant saint?” he explained. “I said, I know that Halloween, Oct 31, falls on the eve of All Saints’ Day, so it would make sense that it means saint.” He was correct. 
 
“It was a chance for evangelization,” Evan said. “When we were not filming, Gina Rodriguez told me she didn’t know that All Saints’ Day was the day after Halloween. She was curious about it, so it was fun to be able to talk about the faith in that way.” 
 
In both shows Evan spent a lot of time with others during the down time, getting to know people he’d otherwise never get a chance to meet. Some of the conversations surprised him such as two people who talked about their divorces. “They implored me to fight for my marriage, expressing the value of marriage and staying together and how bad divorce is, creating great pain and anguish.” 
 
Evan was the only one who said grace before meals. That opened a conversation with someone who was an Armenian Melkite Catholic. 
 
“I was aware of conducting myself in a way that reflects my faith,” he said. “I thought I would be ridiculed but felt support or was asked about it which opened conversations. I was not trying to be pushy or preach but wanted to be open about what I stand for and my values. The Lord can use you as an instrument by living out your faith in an authentic way.”
 
Evan pointed to St. Josemaría Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei as the example of how Catholics should conduct themselves in all circumstances. Escriva encouraged people to spread the call to holiness among fellow men, witnessing to their daily encounters with Christ. 
 
Evan was wearing his scapular and carrying his rosary but not making a show of it. He did, however, find ways to openly live his faith by redirecting negative conversations. “Saying nice things is a very Christian act,” he said. “Even among Catholics, we can be a light.”
 
As for Evan’s future as a game show contestant, he said it was so much fun, he’d love to do it again, so he occasionally applies.