My name is Rebecca and I am the Team Director at Western Kentucky University located in Bowling, Green Kentucky. Go Hilltoppers!

I graduated from Northwest Missouri State University with a bachelors degree in Emergency and Disaster Management. My plan was to become a first responder and to use my degree to save lives and to help as many people as I could. I have always been drawn to service and wanted a career that would both challenge and excite me. With this in mind, I started college filled with hopeful joy about what was ahead of me. However, I quickly entered into the party scene and was the emptiest I had ever been in my life.

One night, I saw the Newman Catholic Center advertise online that they were having mass on campus with confession and adoration to follow. I knew there was something missing in my life and I felt my heart drawn to go to confession. That night I had a profound encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist after receiving an outpouring of his mercy and forgiveness. The peace that radiated through me completely filled all the empty places of my heart and I knew I had found the one thing I was missing. However, it didn’t stop there. I needed a lot of help learning how to live as a Catholic on a college campus.

Through the incredible patience and perseverance of the FOCUS missionaries at Northwest, I learned what true friendship looked like and I began to trust them to lead me in my pursuit of virtue. I found myself surround by people who had a strong desire of walking with me in this journey to heaven. Through the invitations of these missionaries, I joined a bible study and fell in love with the Catholic faith. My life was radically changed and I was the happiest I had ever been. I was excelling in my program and loved working with those most in need. However, as graduation approached, I was drawn to be a FOCUS missionary because I couldn’t shake the reality that the soul is far more important than the body. I couldn’t think of anything better than getting to help other college students realize that there is in fact a God and He knows them intimately. I began college believing the lie that living out my Catholic faith would leave me desolate. The truth could not be more opposite. When I look back on my time as a student, my memories are filled with joy, laughter, and fun. I now have the incredible honor of getting to be on the other side and I get to prove the same thing to the students we serve here at WKU.

After serving as a missionary for 3 years now, I have been deeply humbled by the way the Lord has used my “yes” to aid in my own continued growth and sanctification. Lastly, I really really love my job. FOCUS has been such a large part of my story and I am honored to be a part of such an incredible organization!

When I answered the call to join FOCUS, I accepted the task to rely on the spiritual and financial support of mission partners to help me get to campus. I’ve been blessed with the most amazing people who have journeyed with me in serving. If you are interested in partnering with me, please let me know of the best way to reach you and I will schedule an appointment. I’d be honored to share this mission with you.

It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.

 Pope John Paul II