Howdy! My name is Lauren Carter. I’m a first-year FOCUS missionary serving at the University of Nebraska at Kearney! Lopes Up!

At UNK, I primarily work with women involved in Greek life on campus. Through authentic friendship, Bible studies, and discipleship, I have the privilege of walking alongside these women as they grow in their relationship with Christ and learn how to share their faith with others. My desire is to help them recognize His presence in their daily lives, respond to His call, and follow Him more closely. By investing deeply in a few students, we can help transform lives on campus and raise up a generation of missionary disciples.

Here is our missionary team at UNK! I have the incredible privelege to work alongside these amazing men and women with such a zeal to share their love of Christ!

Pictured (L-R): Christian, Monica, Megan 1 & 2, Lauren (me) & Scott. Not pictured is Maya.

Faith has been a part of my story for as long as I can remember, growing up in a Catholic family in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I attended Catholic school throughout elementary and high school and knew many truths about God, but had not yet discovered the depth of a personal relationship with Him. My faith was something I practiced and believed in, but it had not yet become my own. By the time I arrived at LSU, I found myself caught up in the busyness of college life and going through the motions of my faith instead of allowing it to shape the way I lived.

January 2025, I began spending time in Scripture truly on my own for the first time. I felt the Lord stirring a desire for something deeper. As I learned to listen for His voice, later I felt a nudge to attend Welcome Night my senior year at Christ the King, LSU’s Catholic center. There, I signed up for a women’s Bible study and shortly afterward received a phone call from Madison, a student leader, inviting me to join her’s. What seemed like a simple invitation became one of the ways God transformed my life. I found my best friends and the authentic Catholic community I had been longing for. Through Madison’s investment, and the witness of faith of those around me, the Lord began restoring my soul and drawing me into a deeper relationship with Him.

The Lord continued to guide me through countless invitations to trust Him. One of those came in the form of a last-minute spiritual nudge, (which I thought was just FOMO at the time), to attend SEEK in January 2026. After SEEK, I felt the Lord inviting me into a deeper relationship with Him through the sacraments, a more intentional life of prayer, and a growing desire to follow Him. March 2026, I attended a spring retreat at Louisiana Tech where I met Julia, a FOCUS missionary, who encouraged me to consider this potential call. Through prayer and many small acts of saying yes to His invitations, the Lord called me to take that leap of faith and apply to FOCUS a month before I graduated college.

I now have the privilege of helping college students encounter Christ through the same mission that transformed my own life! The Lord used authentic friendship, discipleship, and a community of faith filled people to draw me closer to Him, and now I get to help others experience that same gift. While my degree is in Public Relations, I often joke that now I get to do PR for Jesus!

When I answered the call to become a FOCUS missionary, I also answered the call to trust God to provide for me through the spiritual and financial support of mission partners. Because others invested in me, I now have the privilege of investing in college students and helping them encounter Christ in a deeper way.

I would be honored to invite you to join me in this mission. If you have any questions or would like to connect and learn more, I would love to hear from you. Thank you for your prayerful consideration and support.

May God bless you!

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