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Walking with students through 1-on-1 discipleship I have been able to see their desire to grow in their faith. We have walked together through different areas that make someone a strong disciple of Jesus. There have also been opportunities to challenge them and help them see the benefits of stepping outside of their comfort zone. God has been good and has shown me how to trust that he truly works in our lives in his own and perfect timing. At the beginning of the year things started off great. I started discipleship with two freshman girls. Two-thirds into the semester one of the girls had to move back home. It was confusing. I didn’t understand why a curveball was thrown her way when she was having a good first semester, the Lord was working in her heart, and she was growing a lot. She went home and I haven’t been in contact with her since then. However, that opened up the opportunity for my team leader to invite me to disciple another student who really was yearning to run in her faith. Ashton is a junior in college, and she and her boyfriend have loved playing board games with us missionaries. They introduced us to Ticket To Ride (which I then asked for as a Christmas gift). She was part of the women’s group that I co-led with another student. I got to know her as a friend as I spent time with her during the fall. This semester as we started discipleship together, we talked about everyday prayer, the sacraments, scripture, virtue, and fasting. We opened up the Catechism together and read what the Church says about the virtues of Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. We got to do service work with a couple other students and we’ve continued to get together to play board games. It has been a blessing to see how the Lord was preparing both of our hearts. My heart needed to let go of the set schedule that I had in my mind of discipling someone- which was to walk with a student for a whole year. For her it was to see that she too wanted to take things more seriously, to be kept accountable, and to be asked to step out of her comfort zone because she knew she wanted to run. We’ve gone through a Lenten book together, she led a Lenten bible study by herself, and I saw her step up in leading conversations. I hope that next semester she is able to continue running in her faith during her last semester and that she can inspire underclassmen to follow in her steps!  Greetings from Whitewater, Wisconsin! My
name is Jocelyn Marin and I am a first-year missionary with Brew City Catholic, serving at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
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A couple times a month, we missionaries host “Friday Formations.” These formation sessions are held specifically for UW-Whitewater students who are in discipleship and/or leading small groups within Warhawk Catholic. The aim of these formations is to develop leaders in the community and have all our students in discipleship come together to discuss themes we have been teaching them individually. We discussed the importance of language and healthy communication last week, based on the following text from St. James 3:5, 9-12.  "So the tongue is a little member and boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse men who are made in the likeness of God. My brethren, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening fresh water and brackish? No more can salt water yield fresh." This text brought about an engaging and fruitful discussion. Here are a couple conclusions we came to: It is important for a community to be founded on healthy conversations. This includes a combination of affirming and correcting one another, if necessary. Both of these aspects of speech are important because it allows one to truly know oneself. It is common to think, “I wish I could see myself through someone else’s eyes!” Well, when used correctly, affirmation and fraternal correction do just that. These tools assist in self-discovery and accountability, and helps one to grow in both virtue and talents. We also talked about how language can be destructive in communities, especially in gossip and sarcasm. While gossip is something that comes easily to mind when talking about harmful forms of communication, sarcasm is typically not. It is important to realize this, we concluded, because sarcasm is essentially a lie disguised as a joke and often times demeaning towards another person’s qualities. Following our Friday Formation, I saw the effect this discussion had on our Whitewater students. In the following days, it was really encouraging to see people still discussing these ideas, and consciously trying to implement the principles we discussed into their own conversations.  Pax! My name is Joe Wiebersch, and I’m a first-year Brew City Catholic missionary at UW-Whitewater and Carroll University.
This is my second stint quarantining since becoming a missionary. God, why this time? Is there even a reason? The answer is a resounding YES! Because, bottom line, God has a plan for my life, and the detours such as quarantine are a part of it! So what is the lesson for this quarantine? Each time I have quarantined there has been a different lesson. In December, it was learning that I needed to grow in reliance on God and to break free from some of the things holding me back from praying like wasting my time and especially too much screen time. This time, however, the circumstances are quite different. Since most of my household was exposed, we have been able to quarantine together, more like the original lockdown. And being with other people has given me a very different perspective on quarantining and taught me another valuable lesson: learning to be interruptible. In her book The Lost Art of Sacrifice, Vicky Burbach quotes C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, in which a senior devil is training a younger one. The advice given is chilling in its accuracy in terms of how I, how we, often view our time: “Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury.... Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him [the person being tempted] into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. They [unexpected guests] anger him because he regards his time as his own and feel that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption ‘My time is my own’. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours.” I am not unlike the person being tempted in the quote above. I like to be spontaneous, but on my own terms. I schedule out appointments, meetings with others, and sometimes still feel like they are interrupting “my” day, and that I should be in control, doing (or not doing) what seems best or most appealing to me with my time. But that is not what I am called to. That’s not the loving option. And so this quarantine, the lesson I am learning has to do with paying attention to others and their needs. From taking a break to help a student with homework, to praying a rosary with a roommate before bed instead of going right to sleep. . . from helping a roommate pump up her bike tires (literally right now!!) to letting the noise of a full house interrupt my thoughts from time to time, this quarantine is about learning to trust God, to be a steward of my time, using it well, but also being available to those around me. Because it is in these little moments of interruption that I am called to remember that loving God consists also in loving those around me, through everyday little moments like these.  Fellow missionary Mari, and me in our "home office" during quarantine.  Hi folks! My name is Teresa Wolfe and I am a first year missionary at the UW-Milwaukee Newman Center. I enjoy cooking, singing, and sharing Jesus and His message of unconditional love with the students and young adults I encounter in community.
 Anyone who knows me knows that I am a cat person. That doesn’t mean I have any grudges against dogs, I just don’t always want to match their energy level. However, over the past few months, I have realized that dogs can be great evangelists. As part of the missionary project, we are matched with a mentor that we meet with a few times a month. These meetings can range from intellectual reading and discussion to asking for advice about ministry and life to bonding over random things. The woman that I have had the blessing to meet with has two adorable dogs, Quimby and Rosie. With the warmer weather, we have started taking Rosie for walks on our meetings which led to some beautiful encounters. One such encounter happened a few Fridays ago. Whenever people go for a walk with a dog, there seems to be an open invitation to start a conversation because people love to greet dogs. We were out walking with Rosie when we crossed paths with a woman who was also walking her dog. As the dogs greeted one another, we started talking with the woman about her puppy and about Rosie when suddenly my mentor and the woman realized that they knew each other from walks in the past. Conversation quickly turned to the woman’s previous dog, who had recently passed away. We were able to listen to her story about the dog’s illness and passing and how she had taken time to grieve and heal before buying a new puppy. With the pandemic and winter, it seemed like this woman had not been able to grieve or celebrate the new puppy with anyone. After about fifteen minutes of chatting with this woman, we said farewell and continued on with Rosie. It was such a beautiful moment of entering into the sorrows and joys of life with a stranger, all because we took a dog on a walk. Moral of the story is that dogs can lead to powerful encounters with people where we are able to show God’s love to strangers simply by acknowledging and listening to them. While I am still a cat person, I have found a new appreciation for dogs.  Thanks for reading all the way to the bio! My name is Mariah Navis, and I am a first-year missionary with Brew City Catholic at UW-Milwaukee. This year has brought so many blessings, especially joy, and I am so excited to share some of them with you!
 For quite some time, I was building my own home. A large home at that. My entire life, I was the carpenter, taking control of the blueprint and even taking a hold of the tools a carpenter uses to build a stable structure. Everyone knows that a sturdy foundation is that on rock and not on sand. Yet, as I continued to ignore the spongy foundation that I was building on, I ceased to notice the storm that was slowly approaching my home. The season slowly began to change from summer to fall as the leaves changed color and the skies began to darken. I was fooling myself into thinking that the storm that was about to approach this home I had built wasn’t going to shake it too hard. I was sure that the sand-like foundation would suffice and only some damage would be seen after the sky cleared. However, the storm rolled through like an angry hurricane that shows no mercy on any shaky foundation and all at once, everything I had built was falling on top of the grains of wet sand. Doors were being ripped off and walls were collapsing onto each other. Like the Gospel of Matthew, the rain poured, the floods emerged and the winds beat on my large home; knocking down just about every wall that I had built to keep myself safe. Safe from the true carpenter, from the one who allowed the storm to appear but to also pass through. As I looked all around me, after the winds had ceased and the rain had quit; the only remains of the home I had built were in shambles all around me. I was exposed. No roof to shield my head and no walls to protect me. I was ridden with shame- everything I had built was gone. While looking around, the sun began to slowly show and the feeling of hope burned my skin. After the clouds began to clear and the bright, burning sun began to appear again, I could see a new carpenter. The one who builds on rock and not sand. The one who is now teaching me that He is the carpenter of the new home He is building for me. As I look back on that storm, I was reminded of what I asked in the beginning of this missionary year: to build in me a stable foundation. Being a missionary has allowed me to see that he continues to rebuild the broken parts of my old home, restoring in me an entirely new resting place. Jesus is not done building and continues to build magnificant rooms in this new home of mine.  Hi there! My name is Mia Marcotte and I'm a missionary at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. I'm from a desert land called Arizona where I graduated from Arizona State University and am now living in the beautiful Midwest!
Talking to strangers regularly is not something I envisioned myself doing when I was growing up. In fact, for most of my life, I actively avoided it. I had my circle of friends and family, and that was enough for me. When I went off to college, I was suddenly surrounded entirely by strangers. There was not a single person that I had ever met before within fifty miles of campus. Though it was nerve-wracking, it was also a beautiful opportunity for growth, and I learned that I actually enjoy meeting new people. God has created so many wonderful souls and it brings me joy to hear their passions and stories. About two months ago, we decided as a UW-Milwaukee team to change our approach to outreach. Partially because of the pandemic, partially because of the city, partially because of our own fear, outreach was a struggle in the first semester. There was an idea in our minds that we had to do something super fun and creative to meet people, but it just wasn’t working. So this semester, we decided to just go and talk to people on campus. No gimmicks, no handouts, just the Holy Spirit, the Gospel message, and us. It was incredibly intimidating! The first time I went with my teammate Mia, I was so nervous that I hoped that we wouldn’t actually find anyone on campus to talk to. Luckily, there were two lovely women who offered to watch my backpack while I ran to get something, and we ended up having a really natural, comfortable conversation about their year and how they had chosen UW-Milwaukee. Though there weren’t any fall off your horse conversion moments nor did the Holy Spirit physically descend like a dove, there was a fire set in my heart from the conversation. Everyone we spoke to that day was so thankful to be approached and genuinely cared for. It was amazing! As the weeks progressed, it became less frightening and more exciting to go out on campus. A few weeks ago during outreach, I felt a tug to approach a woman who was sitting alone. I walked up and introduced myself as a missionary from the Newman Center, and she immediately reacted by saying that she had been trying to get there for over a year but was afraid to go alone. We chatted for about fifteen minutes and ended up agreeing to meet at the Student Union sometime to walk over together. A week later, I texted her to try to set up a time to meet, but her schedule and mine kept conflicting which was very frustrating. I started to feel discouraged and that although it was a blessing that outreach was less intimidating, it still wasn’t bearing the fruit that we had hoped for. The Lord in His goodness took over from there, and much to my surprise, she came to our student dinner last week with a good friend of hers. She had been continually thinking about it after we spoke (the Lord definitely kept the dialogue going!) and ended up talking about it with her friend who was interested in also coming. Not only did the Lord guide me to speak to her, He then continued to guide her to the community here at the Newman Center. The Lord has continued to bless our outreach efforts in surprising ways which has continued stoking the fire in my heart! God is good!  Thanks for reading all the way to the bio! My name is Mariah Navis, and I am a first-year missionary with Brew City Catholic at UW-Milwaukee. This year has brought so many blessings, especially joy, and I am so excited to share some of them with you!
 I would say that the driving force of many of my decisions is fear. I’m sure this is pretty common - if you ask anyone if they have regrets, it’s usually from an opportunity they didn’t take, someone they didn’t approach, or a way that they didn’t stand up for themselves. It’s a unifying human experience. However, the Lord has recently been knocking on the door of my fear and in a surprising way: through outreach. As you could imagine, a fearful person (me) may not take super easily to the idea of walking up to random strangers and starting a conversation. I could give you a fleet of reasons why it would be a bad idea. But I’ve noticed that when my desire for fruitfulness in mission increases then so do the intimidating opportunities that come my way. Outreach is no different, and if I want to grow then I need to dive straight into it. Now I’ll be honest: I do not pass with flying colors. If anything, struggling with outreach has taught me to celebrate the small victories instead of wishing they were bigger ones. I would say, however, that the most powerful thing that I have learned through outreach is a simple fact that has stuck with me: God prepares things in advance. To give some context, my local missionary team does outreach by walking through some spots on campus where students usually hang out to start some casual conversation and invite students to the Newman Center. It’s actually a beautiful experience because as we walk, we ask the Holy Spirit to point out a person or table of people and to tell us to say hi. Like I said before, this is really not my strong suit, but I remember the first time that I went by myself, and I said hi to a student eating lunch and even though it was so awkward, we talked and I found out that we had the same major in college. In the moment, I noticed this as a small point where the Father was saying to me, “Trust Me. I’ve got it figured out.” The most recent time that I went for outreach, I went with a student and although we talked to a couple people, we were mostly wandering around not sure where to go. My avoidance mind was going, “well, this is hard, let’s be done,” but my friend asked Jesus really quickly and casually where He wanted us. Almost immediately, we saw a student we knew and in talking with her found out that she had just received some scary news, and it was obvious that Jesus knew where He wanted us and had guided us to her. Overall, in both moments, I saw how God was guiding me and showing me that I don’t need to be afraid of going where He leads. He arranges things in advance and leaves little signs of His love in every path He prepares for me. It’s all personal. And it’s all love.  Hi! I am Mari Sanchez and I am blessed to be in my 2nd year as a Brew City Catholic Missionary on campus at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. My life as a missionary is a mix of work, play, and random adventures with the Lord, and I am so excited to share just a little of how He has blessed me.
 I met with a student at Carroll University for discipleship. “Discipleship” is an intentional meeting with a student (or a couple of students) that essentially aims to strengthen the student’s commitment of being a disciple of Christ through increased prayer, knowledge of the Faith, and receiving the Sacraments. That day, I met with a freshman who I had been meeting with for about a month. As our meeting was coming to a close, I asked him if there was anything in particular he wanted to work on for that week. He asked if I could go to confession with him, and also asked if we could bring along another freshman guy who we knew. Heck. Yeah. This may seem like something small, but for me this was really exciting and a big step forward for this student. Without knowing it, he was living out his identity as a disciple of Christ. He, like so many characters in the New Testament, saw the goodness attainable in Christ and wished to share it with others. The three of us went to confession that Saturday in Waukesha, and spent some time in prayer at the Church as well. Because it was around noon, we decided to grab some lunch while we were out. We chose Mexican food, specifically tacos. We perused our options: chicken, beef, chorizo. I had more or less made up my mind when one of the students said, “Woah, look! There’s beef tongue!” We looked, and sure enough, there was not only beef tongue but other peculiar types of meat that we had not tried before, like beef-head meat and barbacoa of goat. Before I knew it, we had agreed to try the “trifecta” as we named it. Our consensus: we wouldn’t recommended the beef tongue, personally. Maybe it was the idea of tasting taste buds with our own taste buds that was the deal-breaker, but we do plan on making confession and lunch a regular occurrence. Pax! My name is Joe Wiebersch, and I’m a first-year Brew City Catholic missionary at UW-Whitewater and Carroll University. 
 Making it on my own. Moving out. Independence. The goals of the twenty-something me coming out of college were not so unlike the goals most of us have as young adults. We long to prove ourselves, to find ourselves, to be successful in whatever we put our minds to, to show those watching back home that we have what it takes. And then reality strikes. It was a summer afternoon on a Monday in 2018, and I was going to pray at church on my day off, something I rarely did as a Music Director, because, I rationalized, I wanted free time - after all, directing music at three or four Masses a weekend is exhausting, and church and God honestly just felt like work. By the end of prayer, I was crying because I knew in my heart that I needed to quit my “perfect” job and head home to Wisconsin. I did so six weeks later. Fast forward to Fall of 2019. I was working back home, knowing that my calling was not food service, but struggling to figure out how to move forward. At the prompting of a priest, I had coffee with a Brew City Missionary, who invited me to apply for the Missionary Project - the following weekend! I told God that I was surrendering my will to Him, and He came through with a job offer. The following August, I came to training in the midst of the pandemic, lonely, in need of repentance and love. Confession was a beautiful first step, but where I have found much healing, and where I am able to serve and rest, is in a place I was struggling to find - community. Community was at first so daunting for me. How do I relate to my fellow missionaries, I thought? I know next-to-nothing about how to do this. How do I make friends with them? How do I live with them? I relayed my fears to one of our mentors, who said “have you asked your fellow missionaries any questions about themselves?” A light bulb went on for me! I was living with these people, but not intentionally! So I asked questions. I moved in with three missionaries and three students! There were apologies to make and receive, dealing with different personalities, communication styles, all the above. And there was nowhere to hide. At the same time at the Newman Center, I was working with students in small group Bible studies and large-group settings. They were coming together, relating their struggles and joys in their faith and lives, and it was all beautiful. God was drawing me into community, teaching me that when we do not strive to meet people in community, even, or rather especially, when it is difficult, we fail in our duty to love others. At the same time, I was continuing to learn to really see my faith not as work, but as a personal relationship with Christ that is meant to be shared in community. Then the message really hit home. This last weekend our campus hosted an in-person viewing of the SEEK conference, which is a retreat opportunity with speakers and small group sessions put on by FOCUS, a nation-wide college missionary program. Seeing new students and current come together for small groups and prayer was powerful, and a talk given set us on fire to share the faith! But all of this was born out of coming together for prayer and to be in community, and to bring others into that community which is the Body of Christ, the Church. Hi folks! My name is Teresa Wolfe and I am a first year missionary at the UW-Milwaukee Newman Center. I enjoy cooking, singing, and sharing Jesus and His message of unconditional love with the students and young adults I encounter in community.  I have despised personality tests since I was in high school. No matter which test it is, my friends would always disagree with my results which led to lots of confusion. One consistent disagreement between the people in my life and the tests was whether I was introverted (my friends) or extraverted (personality tests). Basically, an introverted person recharges through personal time whereas an extraverted person recharges through social interactions. Most of my life, people have told me that I must be introverted because I’m quiet. And most of my life, I was conflicted because I love being around people. So as a psychology minor in college, whenever personality tests were mentioned, I always groaned, thinking that I would only be more confused afterwards. As the mission year began and ministry started in full-swing, the long days started to catch up with me and exhaustion started to set in. There were a lot of mornings I woke up tired and not energized for student meetings. But as I got to the meetings, it was like the Holy Spirit woke up within me and I felt like I could bounce off the walls with the energy I had. When I would leave the meetings and work on more administrative things, the tiredness would rush back in.  A few weeks ago, we were able to attend a young adult prayer event and it was amazing. There were so many people that I knew or was able to meet and I was so happy, I nearly cried. It started when I spoke to one of my teammates. While we were catching up, my other teammate introduced me to two young women who love board games almost as much as I do which was such a lovely surprise. While we were speaking, another friend popped into view, and we were able to catch up and share our recent prayer experiences. Then, I ended up in another conversation with one of the women from my Bible study and we had a heart-to-heart about mission which still brings me joy to think about. My heart was so overjoyed and energized after the event that I actually wanted to go for a run..in the cold...at 10 p.m... When I reflected upon the graces of that evening, I realized that being with students has continuously energized me, whereas being alone is often draining. Once I realized that, the Truth was liberating. I am an extravert. It felt like something within me clicked and it was easier to embrace other parts of my personality and be thankful to God for creating me the way that He did. The Lord helped me to realize that my identity comes from Him and not from an online personality test, which brought me so much peace. Thanks for reading all the way to the bio! My name is Mariah Navis, and I am a first-year missionary with Brew City Catholic at UW-Milwaukee. This year has brought so many blessings, especially joy, and I am so excited to share some of them with you!  |
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Brew City Catholic
Archdiocese of Milwaukee
3501 S. Lake Dr.
St. Francis, WI 53235
Archdiocese of Milwaukee
3501 S. Lake Dr.
St. Francis, WI 53235