I will be serving my first year as a FOCUS missionary at CU Denver. I’ll be working with Greek life and walking with students from wherever they’re at all the way to discovering Christ and his church in a deeper and more profound way!

From college bars to leading bible studies

College was an absolute whirlwind. I went into my four years at UNL with the conscious decision to overturn my 18 years of being raised in a beautiful Catholic home. My theory was that if I could run far enough away from Christ then maybe I wouldn’t hear Him calling for me anymore. I really gave this hypothesis everything that I had. I rushed a fraternity and immediately started living out the party lifestyle. I conquered every square on the “college life stereotypes” bingo card.

In a twist of fate (a.k.a. providence), I was elected the Chaplain of my fraternity, and charged with the duty of saying one Our Father prayer per week. With a desire to expand the position to garner fraternity respect, I met with Ben Garrison, who (unbeknownst to me at the time) was actually a FOCUS missionary. He challenged me to invite some of my fraternity brothers to SEEK — an annual conference held by FOCUS — which I did. At SEEK, I really fell in love with the concept of God as Father. If God loves me anything like I’ll love my children someday, he loves me despite all the times I’ve turned from him.

Ok, fascinating, Catholicism is beautiful, but is it true? I had to know. So with the collaboration of my friend Chris, I started a bible study with the expressed intention of proving Catholicism wrong. If it is in fact true, it should stand up to scrutiny. I began reading Augustine, Aquinas, and “Is Atheism Dead?” by Eric Metaxas. It turns out that compared to the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, Richard Dawkins, my previous hero, is about as shallow as a backyard baby pool. We ended up falling in love with Catholicism and it’s depth and wealth of knowledge and beauty.

If Catholicism is true, then realizing it may be the single largest discovery any human being can make. So, my life changed. I was still an absolute screw-up (and still am in many ways), but at least I knew in which direction to orient myself. I began sharing what I had found with fraternity brothers, talking to them about concepts I gathered from Aquinas, C.S. Lewis, etc. With the help of another FOCUS missionary my falsification bible study transformed to instead be about promoting the most vital truths ever revealed to man to my fraternity. God was doing awesome things, I was just along for the ride.

Fast forward 3 years, and I have now joined the same organization that had invited me to change my life.

I’m so excited to give others what I was given. All glory to God, let’s change lives!