The Lord has called me to serve students at the University of Iowa! Go Hawkeyes!

This is my team at Iowa!

Growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, I was raised in a Catholic family where faith was always apart of our family. However, when I went off to college at the University of Missouri, I quickly turned my back on the Lord and wanted to pursue a life away from Him. After a year of getting caught up in the party culture, I finally realized that I had a God shaped hole in my heart and wanted to come back to my faith at the start of my sophomore year. Wanting to make a change in my life, I reached out to our chaplain at the Newman Center.

While meeting with the chaplain in the Newman Center courtyard, one of our FOCUS missionaries, Luke, walked out and introduced himself to me. Over the next several months, he poured into me to show that I was seen, loved, and cared for. Through leading me in Bible studies, discipleship groups, and showing me what it meant to be a man for others, I had a full reversion to my Catholic faith. This reversion sparked a fire in me to invest in the men around me in my fraternity.

Here’s a picture of Fr. Andrew, my friend Coby, and I at a FOCUS retreat for students in Greek life.

Over the next two years, I desired to invest in the younger guys of the fraternity showing them the same love that Luke and others showed me. After time discerning what I wanted to do after graduating, I felt a strong call from the Lord to be a FOCUS missionary making it my mission to bring as many souls to Christ as I can. Since the beginning of my reversion to the faith, I have loved FOCUS and their mission. I am grateful to work for the organization that brought me home and to invest in the lives of the fraternity men I’ll be serving to show them they are seen and loved. In a world plagued with darkness, I want to show the students I’m serving that there is hope in the person of Jesus Christ.

Here’s a picture of a group of us in my fraternity at Ash Wednesday Mass at Jesse Hall.