From age 16, his curiosity about these things began to turn into a serious quest for the True Church. That year, he began immersing himself in everything he could read about Orthodox Christianity, and discovered that one of his schoolmates, Dimitri Rimsky, was of Russian Orthodox background. Dimitri's father, Feodor K. Rimsky, was a parishioner of the Synodal Cathedral of Our Lady of the Sign in Manhattan, and although he did not attend services too often, he recommended the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia to John, and promised to take him there the next time he went.

experience of Orthodox worship made a lasting impression.