Patty Cox

Hi everyone!

My name is Patty Cox, and I am ridiculously excited to be serving a third year at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville campus! I have been blessed to be serving this past year as assistant team director, and I have seen first hand how our ministry here has grown by leaps and bounds. I can't wait to see what the Lord has for our students next!

From practically before I could talk, I’ve known about Jesus, but it wasn’t until I encountered Christ in the Eucharist at a youth conference when I was 15 that I could confidently tell you who this Jesus was.  I was head over heels instantly.  Slowly that love grew and deepened.  I attended Florida International University for two years and recognized the thirst for Love that so many of my classmates and peers were experiencing.  It was such a gift to try to introduce them to Who they were thirsting for.  Throughout that time in college, Our Lord very gently and persistently pursued my heart and brought me to the point that all I desired was to belong to Him completely.  After two years of college, I moved to California to discern religious life with the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles.  I lived with the sisters for two years, watching and learning what it meant to love Christ that radically.  I came to the realization that Christ did indeed desire me to give my life to Him completely, but not in the context of religious life.  I moved back to Florida to attend Ave Maria University, with a big question on my heart of how Christ was asking me to serve Him.  A few months after graduating with a literature degree, an interview for a youth ministry job at a local church fell in my lap.  I took the job, sensing that here, ministering to students who would not otherwise know Christ, I would be able to serve Him best.  Three years later, I can look back on my time ministering to and learning from teenagers and know that I am just so blessed.  I have loved so many aspects of my job: love watching teens' faces light up when they learn something about Christ or His Church they didn't know before, love mentoring our upper-classmen and watching them serve other teens joyfully and well. Watching our upperclassmen bring their friends to church and then watching those friends become some of our strongest students has been one of the greatest joys of ministry. However, there was a desire on my heart to be able to walk with adults; adults who have many of the same questions my teens have, and yet, adults who are in a crossroad of their life, as college always is, and who have perhaps never had a person to walk with them, to offer answers to their questions, and to introduce them to a Christ-centered community where they are able to not only be a strong Catholic but flourish as one. This past year, serving the students of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville campus has been so blessed, and I feel very privileged to be able to serve Christ by continuing to love them and bring them to Him.