MATT SILVERMAN CAMPERSHIP FUND

Matthew John Silverman - October 16, 1983 - June 10, 2024

Matt Silverman, a faithful servant of the Lord whose Christian impact was manifested in Armenian Evangelical churches in San Francisco and Los Angeles, at Camp Arev, and in missions work in Haiti and Vietnam, went to be with his Savior at the age of forty on June 10, 2024 after a three-year battle with intestinal cancer.  Matt was born to Anna and Joel Silverman and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, where his maternal grandmother, Arshalous Sarafian, periodically took him and his brother Jeff and sister Lauren to church.  But it was after a painful yet ultimately successful battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma as a teenager, and after moving to Los Angeles to attend UCLA, that Matt began to explore in depth the person of Jesus Christ.  As Matt began to understand how Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection were real and impacted his own life, he accepted Jesus into his heart during a college retreat at Camp Arev.  Forever after that moment, as Matt later shared in his testimony, his life changed.  While he continued to pursue his education, eventually earning B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA and later teaching at San Francisco State University, Matt’s real focus was on serving the Lord and sharing the Gospel.  The Lord led him to service at United Armenian Congregational Church, at Camp Arev as a counselor, at a UCLA campus ministry in which he made numerous mission trips to poverty-stricken Haiti and Vietnam, and, after moving back to the Bay Area, at Calvary Armenian Congregational Church as their volunteer youth pastor, where he met his lovely wife, Lara Palanjian Silverman.  Matt’s life and impact for the Lord cannot be measured in years, but in numbers of lives touched and hearts changed.