As a kid, I attended church regularly up through my preteen years. We knew the church families, and families knew us. When I was in middle school, the youth pastor for my two older brothers and I had gotten into some trouble financially with the church and was released from the church. This made my parents stop attending church, and thus was the end of my church journey. Once I had gotten old enough to drive, I had gone back a few times, but it wasn’t the same, and I didn’t feel a connection.
When I was an upperclassman in high school, I did drugs for the first time. This led to continual usage throughout high school and into my first semester of college. I was trying to fill a hole in my heart that could only be filled by Jesus.
In the second semester of my freshman year of college at Texas State (Go Bobcats), I was walking through the quad and was handed a card for a college ministry called Crosstalk. After attending Crosstalk, going to community groups, and doing deep dives during Crosstalk Encounter, I decided to choose to follow Jesus and get baptized as an outward expression of my inward faith. I realized that those other things would never satisfy. Now, I am passionate about reaching students right where they are at. I want to show them that the only thing that will truly satisfy is Jesus. I was going down a path that could have ended poorly, but Jesus met me where I was and welcomed me into His home with open arms.