How Your YES can Help this Generation Renew the Church

Three former college students offer an inspiring story of how your “yes” to our Blazing the Way campaign can lead to a multitude of “yeses” to help renew the Church.

Jeremy Kristynik and Nick Smith both recently graduated one year apart from Texas State University located in San Marcos, Texas.

“Even though I was raised in a very faithful Christian household, I was not going to practice my faith,” said Jeremy. “I was going to party, rush fraternities and do the whole college scene.”

That is until halfway through his first semester when Jeremy met Thomas Hammen, a Florida State University graduate who was a missionary with Saint Paul’s Outreach (SPO), a national Catholic organization that works on college campuses.

“Thomas came from Florida State, where Br. Clinton and the Brothers were running a campus ministry with SPO,” said Jeremy. “We had similar backgrounds and Thomas was able to reach me where I was at.”

Nick’s encounter with Thomas was like Jeremy’s. “I met Thomas in the first semester of my sophomore year and saw we shared similar backgrounds,” said Nick. “Fast forward to my junior and senior years when I lived in a household where you live out your faith in school and in all facets of life.”

While together at Texas State, Jeremy, Nick and Thomas encouraged other young men to develop a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

“I wasn’t aware of how to do this until I met Thomas,” said Jeremy. “He was leading me towards Christ, and now I was able to lead others to Him as well.”

During his senior year, Nick wrestled between accepting a job offer in San Antonio or an invitation to serve in SPO as a missionary. “I had the opportunity to attend a young professional retreat in Ohio,” said Nick. “Seeing people living out their faith differently than anything I had seen before made me think, ‘This isn’t just a college thing.’ It was a flame fed from college into these young adults and I just caught the vision for it and I desired that so much.”

Jeremy and Nick credit Br. Clinton and other Brothers for helping them with questions about their faith while in college and even today, as they discern their next chapter. Following Jeremy’s graduation, they have chosen to live in a young adult men’s household with
two other men in San Antonio.

“They've greatly impacted my life and the people around my life,” said Jeremy of the Brothers. “Hopefully Br. Clinton’s ‘yes’ transformed Thomas’ ‘yes,’ which transformed my ‘yes,’ which I hope, God-willing, had an impact on hundreds of guys at Texas State and their
‘yes’ for Jesus.”

Nick shares Jeremy’s hope for the future when he said, “My future wife, who is currently my fiancé, my family, my kids, their kids, they might not know it, but they owe a huge gratitude to the Brotherhood of Hope and their ‘yes’ to serving on college campuses, because it affected me and it’s going to have a huge effect on their life.”