New Beginnings

When we enter a new calendar year, nobody ever tells you how the year will go. With broad strokes, we can anticipate some life changes and try to prepare for them, but oftentimes the biggest changes are those bestowed to us in the form of a cross.

Wrapping up my time in Pittsburgh

As a FOCUS missionary, I never spent more than one year at any single campus. This is not the norm, as most missionaries will spend their first 2-3 years at the same campus and move into a leadership position, such as a Team Director or Denver Support Center (DSC) staff, but I have had the opportunity to experience multiple campus ministries in my time as a missionary on campus.

My time in Pittsburgh was one of great joy, where I not only walked with engineering students, but truly felt connected to the greater Pittsburgh community. With Pittsburgh's history as a primarily blue-collar rust belt city, I felt a strange connection to Steel City. Though there were only a couple of rivers, the echos of locomotive manufacturing, and a budding resurgence of economic development, my childhood in Northwest Ohio prepared me well for life as a Yinzer. However, in contrast to my hometown, Pittsburgh found new opportunities to pull companies in, being home to offices for the likes of Philips, Microsoft, Apple, and Duolingo.

When I made the decision to leave Pittsburgh, I knew it would not be easy, as the campus ministry was one that truly knew how to shepherd souls into a life of missionary discipleship. The life that the Pittsburgh Oratory and Catholic Newman Center provides is one that is sacramental, faithful, and quite simply, beautiful. I look forward to every opportunity to visit Pittsburgh in the future going forward, because I will always have a place to call home there. However, as my wife and I continued our preparation for marriage, it became clear that Pittsburgh would not be the best place for us to start our life together as we looked at moving into support roles for FOCUS. Many missionaries have connections to Pittsburgh due to its Catholic heritage and the Oratory, and while I ended up leaving sooner than desired, I am glad that Pittsburgh is now a part of my story.

Moving, Marriage, and Monasteries

When May 1 hit, my life went into abrupt chaos. Within the span of 3 days, I moved home, unpacked the cars, repacked, headed up to Detroit, and flew to Denver one-way. My then-fiancée picked me, up, we drove to visit her family, then spent most of the next week in the Rocky Mountains, and as things slowed down, drove from Breckenridge, Colorado to Rapid City, South Dakota over the course of a single day, all while trying to learn more about Pope Leo XIV. Somehow, we managed to move my now-wife from South Dakota to Ohio in a Honda HR-V, researching rental van prices and hitch installations as a backup plan, and when we finally got to Ohio (staying at separate accommodations for all our travels), there was still a full week left in May, which I honestly don't even remember.

June was characterized largely by my new role as a Program Director for FOCUS Europe, working on immigration for our US missionaries moving abroad to bring the Gospel to campuses overseas. This incredible opportunity helped me to understand how a lot of the international immigration, tax, compliance, and business world operates, and it also allowed me to use a bit more of my engineering degree, as a lot of the paperwork was very manual and required a solid foundation to stand. Learning more about how to do this work happened while finalizing preparations for marriage such that the month of June was also a bit of a blur. I do remember spending a couple weeks in Columbus and driving to Denver, not to mention working at various coffee shops and hidden gems, but most of the time, I had to build and solve puzzles that I never thought I could build.

And that brings us to July. Alice and I tied the knot on July 11, and after whisking ourselves back to Ohio and then overseas to Austria, had 6 weeks where we didn't have to think about moving, packing, or finding accommodations. We were at FOCUS Europe's New Staff Training, which took place in an old Carthusian Monastery now used as Franciscan University's international campus. This was also my wife and I's first time living in the same space, as we had found separate accommodations for our travels up until our marriage, so we had that to look forward to as well. We had a fantastic time getting to know all of the European missionaries and spending time in Gaming, Austria, and finally had a massive amount of this year's planning and execution behind us as we flew home to the US in August.

More Moving and International Flights

I don't think Alice and I fully understood just how much effort it took to move and plan international travel in a similar timeframe. When we returned to the US, we moved into our new apartment, and in just over a month, realized it wasn't the best fit for us. The apartment search began again!

We found our new apartment shortly before our honeymoon in Italy, which took place in mid-October, and after a wonderful time in Rome, Assisi, and places like Castel Gandalfo and Ariccia for our honeymoon, headed back to the US and moved yet again. Needless to say, we've learned our lesson and no longer plan to have any international travel around the time of a move.

Settling Into Married Life

With our international travel and moving done, we finally started to settle into married life. While many say that will take the rest of our lives, we don't want to wait for the rest of our lives to happen before we learn how to work as a team in marriage. It has been a great joy to intentionally grow together as a married couple, and one of the fruits of that is opening up our home and our marriage to others. We both love to host friends and family, and we have enjoyed this a lot over the last few months.

Job Change... Again.

While we settled into married life, got used to Columbus, and went on our honeymoon, God also called me to consider going back into software engineering to serve Christ and His Church. When I had my job search earlier this year, I considered the opportunity to work for FOCUS in their IT department, but with a massive applicant pool and a resume that wasn't competitive for the number of people under consideration, I was subsequently picked up by FOCUS Europe before ending my time in Pittsburgh. However, I kept looking to side projects in my free time, and as I continued to look for ways to do more software engineering, God slowly called me to use my skills to evangelize and create new ways for people to learn about the beauty of the Catholic faith. Enter Truthly.

Truthly is a Catholic AI startup that allows people to learn about Catholicism in an open-ended manner, communicating with an AI trained to evangelize and inform about the Catholic faith. I got involved with them after months of conversations with CEO Jacob Ciccarelli, who loved the Rosary app I built in college, called Memorare (you can learn more about Memorare here). After some work with them as a contractor for a little bit to pay for some wedding expenses, I was prompted to more seriously consider a full-time role with them, at one point asking for an offer that I could properly consider. Needless to say, that offer came the next day, and after praying through it, talking with Alice, and talking with my manager at FOCUS, accepted and made a plan to transition to part-time with FOCUS and full-time with Truthly as a co-founding software engineer.

All of the transition and new beginnings from this year makes clear that there are two constants in this world: Christ and change. As an engineer, I constantly have to adapt to my surroundings. If I am not aware of the changes around me, the work I do in my professional life, personal life, and faith life will suffer. The same is true with Christ. If I am not aware of Christ around me, the work I do will suffer. With that in mind, I propose that Christ and change are synonymous, as Christ is constantly changing us as we grow closer to him, and the more we grow closer to Christ, the more we want to change.

I've watched this happen in the lives of several faithful men who I have the honor of calling my friends, and I pray that God allows this to happen to me more as he reveals what he wants me to do in life.