Mariah Jackels ’20 FOCUS Campus Missionary | University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse
Mariah Jackels is beginning her first year as FOCUS missionary. The biomedical engineering graduate left her job at a medical device manufacturing company after spending time in prayer and discernment about what the next few years of her life would look like.
“I became a missionary because God asked me to. It didn’t need to make sense, and I knew I could trust God's wisdom and plans. All he was asking for was my yes. ‘Yes, Lord, at your word I will drop my nets.’ How could I refuse him?”
Mariah says St. Al’s provided the atmosphere for her relationship with Christ to take root and flourish. “I was on a tipping point in my faith and easily could have found myself in the ‘spiritual but not religious’ camp or even walking away from my faith had it not been for the students, missionaries, and incredible priests I met through St. Al’s. I encountered Christ in the context of the Catholic Church like I never had before at St. Al's, and my life is profoundly better because of it. I want that for everyone, and as a FOCUS missionary I’m able to play a real role in accompanying students as they wrestle with big questions.”
She says she is excited to meet the women at UW-LaCrosse and share the Gospel with them. “I am looking forward to looking back 12 months from now and being able to honestly say to my Lord: ‘remember that year I gave you everything?’”