During my freshman year at the University of West Georgia in a small town just an hour away from my hometown in Rome, Ga, I knew few people and felt an immense desire for community. It wasn’t until I was walking through campus the second semester of my freshman year and encountered a person with a sign asking “What is love?” that I realized God desired this community for me too. It turned out that this person was doing outreach for the Catholic Center, and this simple invitation started my journey back to the Church.

After several invitations to attend Catholic Center events, I began to make friends. These weren’t just any kinds of friends: I knew there was something more substantial in these relationships than others I had made earlier in college. Slowly, it was becoming the community that mob heart was yearning for, and it motivated me to take my faith more seriously. In this community, through the formation offered, I first was able to comprehend that Jesus was truly present in the Eucharist. Realizing this, I knew that my life couldn’t continue the same way. Sophomore year I was generously invited to go to SEEK in St. Louis. The people around me, the speakers, the yearning to know who God is, all made an impact so grand that when I returned to campus, I felt called to lead my own Bible study with the women around me. Slowly, habits in my life began to change, and I grew closer in my own relationship with the Lord.

God desires me to be embedded in a community of faithful believers, namely the community of His Holy Catholic Church.