“I thought, ‘I don’t want to be here anymore,’” he says. “I was about to do something about it and actually within seconds of me doing it, I heard within the depths of my soul: ‘Don’t do it, son. I love you.’”

Growing up having never known his father, Wells says the male voice he heard felt like Jesus.

“My whole life I was longing for a dad and wondering why my dad wasn’t around,” he says. “It struck me because he called me son and said he loves me.”

Wells, the youngest of eight kids raised by a single mother, took some automotive services classes at Washtenaw Community College, but he now works full time at McDonald’s.

Soon, though, he will begin work as a missionary staff member through the campus ministry program created by St. John the Baptist Parish in Ypsilanti called SJBridge. The group asks for commitment from college students and young adults, who then evangelize on the campuses of Eastern Michigan University (EMU) and Washtenaw Community College (WCC). 

St. John’s Director of Campus Ministry Sister Lisa Zelfa, SGL says the SJBridge program allows young people to take leadership roles in evangelizing their peers.

Zelfa started working at St. John’s in 2020 and says that she and Father Dan Westermann, the pastor, began brainstorming ways to enliven the campus ministry. 

“We wondered how we could start evangelizing that’s not just putting on events, but creating a sustainable community that’s thriving and seeking the Lord,” she says. 

Missionaries who are invited to be a part of SJBridge commit to living out discipleship in Jesus, as well as hosting activities and reaching out to students. 

“They go on mission and are formed together,” Zelfa says. “It requires commitment, but it’s nothing different than what the Church has been doing for the last 2,000 years. They make a commitment to live a certain way that is countercultural to their peers.”

After his life-saving encounter with the Lord in middle school, Wells says he began to read the Bible regularly and grow closer to God until an unhealthy relationship with a girlfriend in high school pulled him away from the Church and into sin. Eventually, he ended the relationship in order to pursue his faith.

“The incline of my faith was like a mountain,” he says. “All throughout high school, I was alone in my faith.”

Wells was already attending St. John the Baptist during high school, but didn’t know about its campus ministry efforts until he was beginning at WCC and heard Westermann announce an event for students.

“I thought, ‘I don’t have anything to lose’ and went,” he says. “Immediately, everyone was open to me and had genuine smiles. I thought, ‘these are the friends I’ve been longing to have. I fell in love with the community.”

He got more and more involved and was eventually asked to join the SJBridge team. Wells also lives in one of two Catholic households the ministry team formed. The men’s house is called the Jordan House; the women’s the Fiat House. The houses prioritize community, hosting dinners for other students and praying together.

Gianna Antonio, a senior at EMU and one of the women living in Fiat House, says she was raised Catholic but that her family did not practice the faith seriously. In high school, a friend of hers from gymnastics took her to a youth group and she began going back to Mass. 

As soon as she arrived at EMU, Antonio got plugged into St. John’s campus ministry and was later invited to join the SJBridge team. 

“We’re providing an environment for encountering Christ for all the students that come to us,” she says, “and we’re trying to bridge the gap between the campus and the church community.”

The team reaches out to students at EMU and WCC through events like weekly gatherings on Thursdays, setting up tables in the student union to begin conversations with passing students, and inviting them to Mass and adoration.

“We’re trying to help them find something they didn’t know they needed,” she says. “I feel like everybody is isolated, even in class or walking on campus. I do see a longing for a healthy community and a place where someone can feel like they belong, rather than just existing.”

Westermann says reaching out to college-aged people about their faith is particularly important, calling the opportunity to bring them into the faith “a beautiful privilege.”

“It’s a pivotal time in a young person’s life,” he says. “they’re very open to asking the big questions: ‘What’s the purpose of life? What am I going to do?’ It opens them to encountering Jesus.”

St. John’s staff members alone cannot evangelize two college campuses, he adds, so they depend on students to gather up their peers. 

“The fruit we see is students more on fire for the Lord, ready to witness and evangelize,” Westermann says. “There’s a boldness that we see in some of the students in wanting to evangelize in a debate class or public speech class, taking on hard topics, knowing they’ll be persecuted.”

Antonio exemplifies this, saying she’s grown more confident in her ability to speak with strangers about the Catholic faith. 
“I’m much more willing to say ‘yes’ to the things I’m called to, even if it feels inconvenient or hard,” she says.