I’m an 8th year on staff and currently serving as the Team Director of Parish Outreach at St. Mary’s in Spokane Valley.

“Man cannot fully find himself unless through making a sincere gift of himself” – St. Pope John Paul ll

All my life I’ve had big dreams; a singer/songwriter, a novelist, a coastguard, a super sleuth like Nancy Drew. As I got older and began to form a daily relationship with God, this desire to do something great with my life became significantly stronger. To my amazement, I began to find that the more I sought God, the more my desire for greatness grew!

After returning from my 1st FOCUS mission trip to Mexico City my sophomore year at Arizona State University, I felt the call in my heart to venture deeper into Christ’s mission. It was shortly after that He gave me the opportunity to study the deeper truths of our faith through theological studies at the University of Marys’ satellite campus in Tempe. This is where my heart was truly set on fire for God. The knowledge I was learning, lived alongside a daily prayer and sacramental life, completely changed my life. With my psychology background at ASU, it was particularly in coming to understand human anthropology through the Christian lens that I realized the thirst I was feeling was really an invitation. In fact, I began to realize that my whole life, every suffering, every joy, and every desire was an invitation to live the greatest adventure set out for every human person: the call to know Christ and grow into his likeness (allowing ourselves to daily be transformed by Christ and saying yes to His will for us)! I knew very quickly that if my life wasn’t lived with and for God, I would never be satisfied but always be searching.

How many people in the world, including many Catholics, never realize the great gift being offered to them everyday or fully taste and see how GOOD God is. We’ve all done and experienced this to a degree in our own way, and it’s very possible some of us have never truly encountered the person of Christ in a personal and profound way. In many different ways, the Father planted and nurtured the seeds of faith all throughout my life, and in college I finally found the “pearl of great price” that was worth trading everything for. This is what led me to say “yes” to becoming a missionary disciple with FOCUS.

My time in FOCUS has both challenged and changed me in ways words cannot capture. I don’t want to think about the person I might be if God had not met me and called me in college. However, here I am, eternally grateful for the ways I’ve gotten a front-row seat to seeing the transformational grace of God at work. He is still working miracles, everyday.

I hope to continue to nurture and share this great gift with people wherever I go and truly thank God for the ways FOCUS has equipped me to do that.

When I answered the call to join FOCUS, I made the decision to rely on the spiritual and financial support of mission partners to help me be radically available to the people God’s called me to serve. The very foundation of discipleship is accompaniment because its through relationship that we learn to participate in the life God invites us to daily.

St. Theresa of Calcutta said it best when she proclaimed, “some people give by going, and some go by giving.” Not everyone has the opportunity or means to give 2 intentional years of their life to building the kingdom of God and helping those in spiritual poverty. However, no matter our age or state I life, each of us by right of our Baptism is invited into this life of missionary discipleship. This is, in fact, the very reason the church exists, to evangelize! Whether or not you are called to financially give to FOCUS, how are you helping to advance the spread of the Gospel? However, as you are here reading my story, I’d like to personally invite you to consider joining me on mission prayerfully and financially. Without each of my mission partners, I could not do this work with such radical availability! 🙂