The West River Catholic sat down with the Fellowship of Catholic University Students team at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology to meet the new team members, find out what their new goals are and to get to know them better. FOCUS was founded in 1998 and uses campus missionaries to invite college students into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ, equipping them for a lifetime of Christ-centered evangelization, discipleship, and friendships in which they lead others to do the same. The goal is to have students take the skill, formation, and encounters with Christ and share them for the rest of their lives. Missionaries are college graduates that range from newly graduated, to families, to adults who feel a call in their lives. Look for the missionaries at the St. Carlo Acutis Student Catholic Center. Sunday Mass is at 9 am and 7:30 pm. Want to reach out? Email Joe Allen at joseph.allen@focus.org

Joe Allen, Team Director
Years with Focus: 5th year 

Cassidy Nelson
Years with Focus: 2nd year

Anna Eich
Years with Focus: 3rd year

Joe Ryan
Years with Focus: 1st year 

When did you know you wanted to become a Focus Missionary?
Joe Ryan: I had been discerning it since my junior year of college. The missionaries told me about the interview weekend so I decided I might as well go. I spent some time in prayer and initially I wasn’t sure, but I felt like this is what the Lord’s calling me to do. 

Anna: When I first encountered Focus, I was attracted to my missionary’s joy as well as her personal relationship with Jesus. She kept inviting me to things, and I kept going. My sophomore year, I signed up to work as a Totus Tuus missionary in Duluth and that was my first taste of mission. I liked being able to serve the young families and especially like the kids and the teens. By the end of that summer, I had a fire in my heart. I wanted to do this longer. That’s the first time that I seriously started considering a long-term mission. By the end of the Focus interview weekend, I knew this is where I’m being called. 

What was your reaction to your placement?
Joe Ryan: I was a little shocked to be sent so far away from my family in Wisconsin, but I had been here once before about five years ago, and I knew it was a beautiful area. I already knew Joe Allen, my team director here, from my interview weekend and training. Then I found out it was an engineering and mining school, and it made sense to me. I thought this was a good fit. I have somewhat of an engineering background so I can relate to the students better.  

Anna: I wanted to know the scope of the female athletes here because that’s who I would be working with. I was more interested in knowing what that looked like especially when I heard it was an engineering school and was majority male. I had never heard about a place like that. I was a biology major but nothing engineering STEM dominated like it is here. I was a bit shocked. 

How do you see last year’s leaders stepping up?
Cassidy: We have some very good student leadership that’s coming. Last year, we had a very good student board too and this year, there are a couple that have remained and are very eager and excited to help St. Carlo and the community in building a better community. 

The students here are very inspired about their faith and they are praying daily. They’re going to daily Mass. They’re very involved on campus. It’s cool to see them brought up as leaders and see them go out and encounter these students. They have that desire to build up the community. I think we’ll have a good student board this year because of those qualities. 

We have Fr. Mark (McCormick) and Fr. Todd (VanderMay) as our spiritual fathers, and they’re very relatable and they reach the students here very well. They are fun and youthful. They like to joke around, which is good for college students.

Joe Allen: We are very excited to have Fr. Todd. He’s younger than I am. I think he’ll inspire the men here when they see a young vocation, like a young priest, I think that really lights a fire in our young men. He’s smart, cool and engaging and gives great homilies. Maybe some guys will end up going to seminary through his witness. 

He’s also relatable on campus with students. He’s as excited to come to the lunchroom and come see football. It’s really cool. He’s always asking what the next thing is. 

What is your vision for this year?
Joe Allen: Each year we try to grow participation in Bible studies and discipleship by 10 percent. In order to do that we need to reach out to more students. We have two big trips planned and we are hoping to take 40 students to SEEK this year in Texas. But the main thing is to bring them into Sunday Mass and Bible study. That’s where the four of us are working very hard — to recruit and spread awareness. 

We have two big trips this year. What I’m concerned about is how they’re going to interact with their classmates when they come back and how they’re changed on campus — how they’re going to interact with their classmates and evangelize them. 

What do you hope to build on from last year?
Joe Allen: On the men’s side we’ve built up a lot of commissioned disciples. In the broader church, we call them missionary disciples, but in Focus, we call them commissioned disciples. How do we continue to build them up as leaders on their football or soccer teams, when they’re in class? 

Cassidy: We as a team are really focused on building up more community amongst our disciples. That was one huge thing we worked on last year was getting the disciples to interact with one another — my disciples, the women they are leading, both my male teammates —  all of our disciples getting together to go on hikes, going out for ice cream, doing rosary walks. I want to build up that community because it’s easy to have a community in your own discipleship group under your missionary, but it’s not as often that they end up knowing the people from the other groups and becoming friends. We want the athletes to be friends with the non-athletes, not just at St. Carlo but in the broader community too. 

What are you most excited about?
Anna: Getting to see where the Holy Spirit is leading the athletic teams. I’m coming into this new. I don’t know anybody. I’m still getting to know them for the first time and working with them despite what they’ve done in the past. I get to see what the Lord has in store for them. I’m pretty excited about that.

Cassidy: I’m excited for the community amongst the women here. Specifically, there’s a freshman group of gals that have come in, and they’re all Catholic and eager to get involved in getting a Bible study that’s not the same thing from the year before. Seeing that gives me a lot of hope for more contagious, on fire women for the faith.

I love seeing the students in the chapel during our adoration times praying. Last year, there’d be certain hours where there would be 8-10 students praying at the same time. That’s where it all starts, first and foremost, it starts with your personal relationship with Christ, praying with him, talking with him. Whenever I get to see that it’s always a good reminder of the purpose of our mission.

Joe Ryan: The thing I’m most excited for is seeing how the Lord is inviting me to grow on a personal level and a spiritual level. I’m also excited to get to know all of the men in the community that have been entrusted to me. To get to know their stories, get to know where they’re at in their faith and be able to invest in them. 

Joe Allen: To build off of what Cassidy said earlier about our disciples knowing each other — I’m very excited about that. I think it builds excitement. My hope is to have a football commissioned disciple that maybe feels like he’s all alone, but then he comes to the upper room and sees a commissioned disciple from the volleyball team or the soccer team and knows he’s not alone.

You can see the grand scheme of everything that we’re doing on this campus of winning and building and sending out students to be disciples. Then, when they get to SEEK, they see thousands of commissioned disciples and what we’re trying to do at all the universities around this country. 

What is your message to parents and the community as this school year begins?
Joe Allen:  We try our best to make St. Carlo a home away from home for the students. We have a very welcoming community, and we look after all of our students here like they’re our own brothers and sisters.