This article has been edited for clarity.
Devin Rankin, Lauren Lewis, Peyton Smith and Srishti Gupta have joined the Catholic Student Center to serve as missionaries on behalf of the Fellowship Of Catholic University Students.
According to Father Bob Frederick, the campus priest, this is the first time that in-person missionaries have been sent to the Kennesaw State Catholic Center.
FOCUS missionaries come to colleges, including KSU, to share their faith. FOCUS partners with chaplains and campus ministers at host universities.
In this partnership with the campus minister, missionaries help them plan different events like bible study and sacraments for students at KSU.
Gupta says she has been a FOCUS missionary for six years and that she has loved every minute of it. She tells us her purpose in FOCUS is based on her desire to serve.
“I am here to serve. I am sure God will grace me with friendships and deepen my relationship with God,” she said. “I am passionate about serving God when he calls me to serve.”
Each of the four missionaries are young adults. Gupta and Rankin both shared in their personal biography pages on the Catholic Student Center website that they converted to Catholicism while in college.
Gupta said that she credits her college experience with bible study as the reason she is now involved in organized religion.
“I actually converted when I was in college,” Gupta said. “So I went to Georgia Tech, studied aerospace there, and my first year in college I converted to Catholicism from being an atheist. And that conversion just really impacted my life for the good.”
As stated on the FOCUS organization website, their mission is to, “Make disciples for Christ first.”
The website continues, saying, “We invite people into a relationship with Jesus in the Catholic church. Then we accompany them along their journey.”
Missionaries are supposed to go anywhere they are sent, according to Gupta.
FOCUS is located on 193 campuses across the United States, according to their website’s “Find a Campus” page. The organization sends people to colleges around the world to spread the word of God. However, FOCUS is mostly concentrated in the United States, meaning the organization prioritizes different locations within the United States for missions.
FOCUS campus missionaries are involved in outreach as well. Although there are no currently planned on-campus events, FOCUS hosts conferences for students who are interested in going. This year’s conference with be hosted in St. Louis from Jan. 1-5.
The FOCUS missionaries invest deeply in students’ lives. They work on building the students up while bringing them the knowledge and practice of the Catholic faith.
According to the “Campus Life” webpage, this coming year, 2024, FOCUS will mark its 25th year in operation. Father Bob said that they are planning how to best commemorate this milestone.
“We’re still in the early planning stages with the Catholic Student Union Officers and the FOCUS missionaries,” Father Frederick said. “We are discussing how to celebrate this milestone best. I do know that there will be 50-plus KSU students going to FOCUS’s Seek conference in St. Louis. And there will be anniversary celebration events on this milestone.”
