SPO Changed My Life

By Bishop Andrew Cozzens

Christ is alive on campus! As the Chairman of the Board, I am witness to the extraordinary success and growth of SPO’s mission across the country. Our budget has doubled in the past five years while our mission has more than tripled its campuses impacted by our missionaries. We have honed our methods and have increased participation on our National Board and Advisory Boards nationwide. Most importantly we are reaching more students with the hope of Christ and equipping them with the tools to enter the world prepared to be missionary disciples for life.

I’m aware of the power of this transformation because I experienced it when I was a college student myself, and I encountered SPO Missionaries. These Missionaries witnessed to me that there were young people, my age, who were passionate in their love for God and seeking to live lives of holiness. This made an incredible impact on me in my discernment of the priesthood.

Observing their lives of faith and prayer gave me a new self-awareness, a realization that I should be living this way too. I knew I needed help learning how to integrate my faith life with my daily living. So I joined summer Household with other SPO students in 1989 and it gave me the practical formation I needed to learn how to live my relationship with God daily as a college student.

In SPO Household we prayed together and went to Mass together. We waited in the confession line together. And we forged the kind of friendships that acted like a glue for these activities, fixing them naturally into the context of life on a college campus. I wouldn’t trade that Household experience for anything; it was the foundation for the prayer life that still grounds me today as a priest and bishop.

I’m so thankful that young people today still have the opportunity to serve one another through SPO communities, and that their numbers are growing every year. I’m thankful for the many generous supporters who partner with our work through their financial gifts to make it all possible.

May God bless you for your part in ensuring college students and young adults will have the chance to live their faith in transformational community that prepares them for the future!

In Christ,

Bishop Andrew Cozzens