I was raised in Maysville, Missouri, and attended the Maysville 1st Baptist Church growing up, where I was baptized when I was 11 years old. When I began attending college at the University of Missouri-Kansas City for pharmacy school, I experienced an emptiness in myself that I had tried to fill with so many things other than God for so long. It was in large part because of the friendship of a Catholic missionary at UMKC that I encountered the love of God really for the first time through friendship.

Having won my desire for Him through this friendship, God moved me to seek out the fullness of truth and the fullness of the Christian faith in the Catholic Church. I went through RCIA and entered the Catholic Church February 12th, 2012. After finishing my degree in pharmacy in 2014, I completed a residency in Toledo, Ohio, and then moved to Branson, Missouri, and worked at the hospital there as the clinical manager for the pharmacy department for three years. It was in the course of my career as a pharmacist in Branson that the desire to pursue the priesthood began to grow.

I was blessed to have the opportunity to begin discernment for the priesthood in 2018, initially for the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau but later transferring back to my home diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, where I am currently completing my pastoral internship at Our Lady of Guadalupe. I am excited to meet each of you and give myself to this beautiful Church community over this next year!