Meet The Missionaries
This is my third year as a missionary at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and I’m overjoyed to be returning!
I’m from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I spent two years at Carnegie Mellon and two years at the University of Pittsburgh, graduating with a degree in English literature and philosophy. I’ve been involved with FOCUS for three years as a student, and two full years as a missionary.
I joined FOCUS in large part because, two years ago, a FOCUS missionary challenged me to go deeper into my faith. And the deeper I go, the more I want to share it!
I recently graduated from Marquette University, which is a non-FOCUS school. Fortunately enough, the Lord has lead me to be His Missionary to students on MIT’s campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts despite my limited experience with FOCUS during my own college years. Through friends who attended FOCUS schools or were missionaries themselves, Christ began to open my heart up little by little to serving His Church in a way I would have never imagined on my own! I am so excited to share the Love and Joy I have experienced through my personal relationship with Jesus with the students at MIT!
Going into college I thought that I was prepared to take on the world. I had excelled academically, socially, and athletically my entire life and had a wonderful support system of family and friends. However, I was getting one thing wrong. All the glory and honor for my accomplishments was focused towards me, not God. I quickly learned that the environment on college campuses would further challenge my ability to grow stronger in my Catholic faith.
While at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), FOCUS came into the picture and I was able to open my eyes to the role God and the Holy Spirit have in my life. I learned my mission is to live according to the will of God, and I heard the calling to pass along this truth to other college students by becoming a FOCUS missionary.
God is real. Yet, the reality of Him didn’t truly hit me until I was living in New York City–a place that one might equate with Ninevah, with Thebes, plagued by the materialistic and the less than good desires of man and known for its less than virtuous activities. Nevertheless, it was within this city, that God’s light broke through the darkness.
This realization was a slow one. It was easy to get caught up in the Big Apple and all it has to offer–walking the Brooklyn Bridge six billion times, dining at restaurants that are snapshots of every country, getting caught up in the social scene–as well as getting absorbed in declaring my standard “collegiate” independence. God watched me fall off track. Though he wasn’t sitting up in the clouds laughing at me, but rather the entire time, Jesus was right next to me waiting for me to take his constantly extended hand–the ultimate and never ending invitation. Eventually after almost three years, I said yes…and so it began!