God has called our family to Denver, Colorado, where Jon is in his 8th year with FOCUS and serves as Director of the Bosco Project!

FOCUS has been a major part of our family’s story for many years, and we are grateful to continue serving the mission through the Bosco Project. Your prayers and support allow our family to continue helping form the next generation of Catholic missionaries and leaders.

Bosco Project Mission

Inspired by St. John Bosco’s deep love for young men, the Bosco Project exists to form young men into the kind of missionaries the Church needs: holy, free, and ready to lead.

Many men apply to become FOCUS missionaries with zeal, generosity, and desire for mission. Bosco helps that desire become rightly ordered, steady, and fruitful. In a Bosco Project house, men serve on campus as FOCUS missionaries while living a shared life of prayer, brotherhood, accountability, and mission. They are accompanied by formators who help them grow as men, lead with greater freedom, and respond more fully to the call God has placed on their lives.

Our hope is that every Bosco man becomes more fully who God created him to be, so that he can bring Christ to others with joy, confidence, humility, and fruitfulness.

Who was St. John Bosco?

The Bosco Project is named after St. John Bosco who dedicated his priesthood in the late 19th century to working with young men who were orphaned by society in northern Italy. St. John Bosco opened numerous homes called oratories for young men to grow in their faith, virtue, and learn skills that would help them become holy, mature, men able to discern their vocations. Through St. John Bosco’s holiness, simplicity, and deep love, he started many group homes for young men across Italy, and at the end of his life, over 3,000 men identified a personal relationship with Don Bosco as a major influence in their call to the priesthood. A bishop once commented on St. John Bosco’s oratories that:

“Sanctity was in the air you breathed. You did not notice its presence so much as its absence the moment you left. ” 

The Lord has continued to bless the Bosco Project over the past several years. What began as one formation house in Denver has now grown into three Bosco houses serving:

Denver, Colorado – Auraria Campus

Naperville, Illinois – Elmhurst University and North Central College

Crete, Nebraska – Doane University

Since starting in 2022:

• • • 69 men have served as FOCUS missionaries with the Bosco Project
    • 52 have been placed on traditional FOCUS campuses after 6–12 months
    • 32 are currently serving on campus teams
    • 16 campuses are currently being served by missionaries who would not be there without Bosco
    • 10 men are currently in seminary or entering in the fall

We are grateful for the many bishops, chaplains, campus partners, FOCUS leaders, benefactors, and local communities who have helped make this growth possible. Through their support, the Bosco Project is helping more young men receive the formation they need to serve fruitfully as FOCUS missionaries.

“I’ve wrestled with a selfish attitude, a ‘perfect’ relationship with God, expectations of ‘perfect’ mission, and the life of virtue for many years, and I have never made as much headway in growing closer to God in all of those things than the months I spent in the Bosco Project.”

– Bosco Project Alumni

We are deeply grateful for your prayers and support! This mission is only possible because of people who choose to partner with us financially and spiritually!

If this mission or our family inspires you, we would love to talk with you! Please reach out to us either by phone (402)-310-5972 or email at [email protected].

We’d be honored to have you partner with us in God’s transformative work!

God bless,

Jon & Madeleine