John Michael and Emily Lucido

Hello! We are John Michael and Emily Lucido and we alongside our three children, Eden, Judah and Lawrence serve as missionaries. Jesus changed our lives in college forever and now we want the whole world to know about him. It would be a privilege to have you join our family in this adventure!

Where We serve

 

“The love of husband and wife is the force that welds society together” – St. John Chryostom

We are currently in our sixth year serving the Lord with FOCUS as a missionary family. We live in Denver, CO where John Michael serves as a Regional Director for the South Area. He is based out of the FOCUS office here in Denver where he works daily with other leaders in the organization. This role as Regional Director allows for him to form and invest in teams and leaders at the following universities: University of Alabama, Auburn University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, University of Alabama-Birmingham, Samford University, Murray State University, Western Kentucky University and Troy University. His role involves traveling to each of these campuses and being a “missionary to our missionaries” as he equips them to lead hundreds of students to an encounter with Jesus Christ. What an honor it is to serve in this leadership role!  Emily has the beautiful role of staying at home with our two beautiful children, Eden and Judah as a full time mom. She also works part time Formation Department assisting in forming our missionary staff. We are blessed to continue in this mission as a family and to continue to bring Christ to this nation and world. Please join us in this mission!

Our Story

Both of our lives were changed forever in our times as college students at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. We fully believe in the transformation that can happen in college students’ lives because it first happened to us!

“Man cannot fully find himself, except through a sincere gift of himself.” St. John Paul the Great

John Michael’s story-  If the story is mine, then it is only because God is the author of it. He started writing my story in Dallas, TX where I was born to a wonderful Catholic family. They raised me with strong values and morals, yet I like so many others was indoctrinated with the lies that the world taught me from a very early age would make me happy. I have always been a people pleaser, and some of my earliest memories involve feelings of insecurity, changing who I was to fit in with people, and constantly searching for other’s affirmation of me.

This deep wound affected me in many ways throughout high school and college, and I tried to find every possible way to convince myself that I was lovable by others. Whether it was athletics, alcohol, women, my fraternity in college, leadership positions, or academics, no matter how hard I dove into each of these I was still left feeling entirely unfilled. This changed following my freshman year of college at Texas A&M University. I had a very rough freshman year, making a lot of mistakes and worked my way into getting kicked out of A&M after my freshman year of college. I moved back home to live with my parents and figure out what to do with my life. It was a low- I felt like a complete and utter failure and embarrassment. This is when I experienced God in a powerful way work in my life, I began reading the Bible and I came across 2 Corinthians 12:9, where St. Paul writes “For God said to me, ‘My Grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly my weakness, so that the power of Christ may rest in me.”

This simple truth: that it is precisely my imperfection that God loves and works in, changed my future. I began to fall deeply in love with this God who loved my brokenness and experienced an unbelievable personal transformation. I got accepted back into A&M, returned to school, and was on a mission to share how my life was different with those around me. That was when I reconnected with Emily. I noticed that she was living for the same reality- to know Jesus Christ and make him known, and we began to date.

After three years of courtship, we discerned marriage and got married January 19th, 2019- half way through my first year as a missionary at KU.

Emily’s story-  I was raised in Tyler, Texas by a wonderful nondenominational family where I grew up knowing the story of Jesus.  I am forever grateful for my upbringing that taught me so much in the ways of the love of God, sacred scripture, and having a personal relationship with the person of Jesus. Although I was surrounded by the Gospel of Christ, I could not accept that I did not have to earn Jesus’ love and so up until college I tried to earn my worth and love by doing all the “right things.” I completely put my identity in what others thought of me.  I tried to earn love through being a “good, Christian girl”, making good grades, being well-liked, and my appearance. This affected all parts of my life and left me feeling unsatisfied, not enough, and with the gnawing feeling that I constantly needed to be making myself lovable.

When I began college at Texas A&M, I entered into authentic friendships with women who encouraged me to begin daily prayer, which radically changed my life. Slowly, Jesus began to reveal himself to me in prayer and showed me all the ways I was putting my identity in what others’ thought of me and how I continued to try and prove myself to him. In prayer, Jesus showed me that there was nothing I could do to earn his love. During this time, I began to explore Catholicism and found myself being drawn to the Catholic Church.  As I journeyed with Jesus in prayer, I began to ask him if what the Catholic Church claimed was true.  After several years of prayer and discernment, I got confirmed in the Catholic Church in November of 2017!

My time in college radically transformed me and totally changed the trajectory of my life. This has deeply convicted me of necessity of missionaries on the college campus.

Our Story: We were engaged our senior year of college at Texas A&M and shortly after said yes to serve as missionaries with FOCUS. We were placed together at the University of Kansas and were married in January 2019. We were blessed with our eldest child Eden in October of 2019 in our 2nd year at KU. After our second year, John Michael began serving at the Team Director and Emily as an on-campus affiliate missionary. In February 2021, our second child Judah Michael was born and in May of 2022 after 4 years at KU, God called us to pack up our family and move from Lawrence, KS to Denver, CO to better serve the mission of FOCUS and Christ’s Church in John Michael’s new role. We are now expecting our third child in fall ’23!!

Your Impact

Our family has said yes to following Jesus Christ in a radical way by being full time missionaries. Part of this is that our family relies on the spiritual and financial support of generous mission partners in order for us to provide for our family and serve God. So far in our four years as missionaries, support raising has been one of the most tangible ways God has shown his faithfulness to us. If this mission or our family inspires you in any way, we want to talk to you! Please reach out to us personally either by phone 214-934-8707 or through email at [email protected]. It would be a privilege to have you partner with us in this life-changing mission!

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