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DENVER (CNS) — In March, Ryan Clydesdale was looking forward to heading to Hawaii with friends for spring break, “but deep down I kept feeling pulled” to do something else.

That something else was to be part of a Peru mission trip sponsored by the Fellowship of Catholic University Students.

“I really felt like God was pushing me to go,” said Clydesdale, a student at the University of California Los Angeles.

“Josh (a FOCUS missionary at UCLA) kept inviting me until I finally said yes,” he said. “I was a little nervous at first because it was my first mission trip, but I knew the Lord was asking me to go and serve.”

This March, nearly 240 people traveled on 11 spring break trips to serve the people of Peru’s Pamplona Alta, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Lima, working alongside members of the Christian Life Movement. For the coming academic year, FOCUS plans 16 trips to Peru.

FOCUS officials say that such short-term mission trips are one way the organization aims to answer Pope Francis’ call for Catholics to “have the courage to go against the tide of … the culture of exclusion, of rejection.” That call came in his address to clergy during World Youth Day in Rio de Janiero in 2013.

Such a culture “is spreading,” he said. Today, “there is no place for the elderly or for the unwanted child; there is no time for that poor person in the street,” he said. In response, people of faith must “be servants of communion and of the culture of encounter!” the pontiff said.

Many students return from the FOCUS trips transformed in their faith and inspired to serve others. Clydesdale is no exception.

“The people in Pamplona changed me the most. Their physical poverty was very real, but their joy, gratitude and generosity were incredible to experience,” he said. “There was no running water, cramped living quarters and a giant hill they had to climb every day, but their spiritual wealth was obvious. I never expected to be so fulfilled to wake up early for Mass and then work alongside them all day under a hot sun.”

He and others in his group helped local volunteers build stairs in Pamplona. They “spent days mixing concrete, hauling it up the hill and pouring the stairs,” he explained.

But there was time to participate in Holy Week activities, “such as a Spanish rosary and Mass with the local families. On Good Friday, I was able to use my EMT training and work in the walk-in clinic for the community.”

The experience changed him as a Catholic, he said.

“Before this, I would say I was a nominal Catholic,” Clydesdale explained, “but now I feel proud to be a Catholic and I am excited to share my experience with others. I have real ownership of my faith now and I am getting more involved with the Catholic events on campus.”

Macie Weaver, a junior at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, said she returned home from the FOCUS with “a greater desire to serve people at home.”

“Every day we made a difficult hike up the mountain to Pamplona. We worked with the people to build a wall to protect their houses from mud slides and rocks, and it was amazing to see the ways our hard work went directly to this community to leave a real impact,” she said.

She described the “significant impact” a woman named Blanca living in Pamplona had on her.

“We worked and laughed together every day. When we said goodbye, she gave me a hug and said I would always be in her heart and I was moved to tears,” Weaver said. “I will never forget her friendship! I was also really impacted by the daily adoration and Mass, as well as spiritual direction from the chaplain who came with us.”

“I connected on such a personal level with Blanca and others in Pamplona. As we worked side-by-side, we opened our hearts to each other and shared personal stories,” she added. “I realized I am called to love all the people in my life that same way. I’ve also learned to listen more to God in prayer.”

In Peru, Weaver said, she learned “Jesus has given me a real desire to be a missionary and I’m now looking into missionary organizations to serve in after I graduate.”

Josh Paiement is the FOCUS missionary at UCLA campus who invited Clydesdale to do the mission trip to Peru. He also was in Peru with Clydesdale and other students. The experience reinforced what he has long believed about the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

“The coolest part of going as a missionary was being re-convicted by how the Holy Spirit can transform lives!” he said. “On campus throughout the year, progress can be gradual, but on mission it happens in a powerful way in a short amount of time.”

“On mission,” he added, “the distractions of social media and school work are replaced with service and time for prayer and reflection.

This academic year, FOCUS Missions is sending over 2,000 participants on more than 130 trips around the world. Most participants are students, and each trip includes a chaplain and four FOCUS missionaries from the 137 campuses on which FOCUS serves. Please pray for all the trips participants this summer who will serve in Peru, as well as the 37 other countries throughout the world.

WASHINGTON (CNS) — In a couple of short weeks, more than 12,500 people, mostly college students, planned to descend on San Antonio for the Jan. 3-7 SEEK2017 conference of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students.

The sight of so many college-age young people gathered to grow in their faith relationship with Christ and the Catholic Church is awe-inspiring, said Capuchin Franciscan Father John Lager, national chaplain for FOCUS since 2013.

The priest is often brought to tears to see so many young people “on their knees in great prayer,” he told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview from FOCUS headquarters west of Denver in Genesee, Colorado.

The biennial SEEK conference includes general sessions with keynote speakers, breakout sessions, liturgies, daily adoration, confessions and entertainment. About 25 bishops will be in and out of the gathering; and over 200 priests will be there, as will dozens of seminarians and religious sisters. At SEEK2015, priests heard more than 5,500 confessions.

A national Catholic outreach program founded in 1998, FOCUS invites college students into a relationship with Christ and the church. It is designed to inspire and prepare them for a life of evangelization, discipleship and friendship in which they lead others to do the same.

More than 550 full-time FOCUS missionaries are currently on 125 college campuses in 38 U.S. states this academic year. And in its first international expansion, FOCUS this year has missionaries in two pilot locations in Austria — Graz and Vienna.

Working with Father Lager at the national level are three other FOCUS chaplains — Fathers Brendan Rolling, Jay Buhman and Doug Grandon. Each oversees a region of the country. FOCUS also has campus chaplains.

“The model that FOCUS has used from very beginning that is most effective for young people today is to begin to have a conversation” with them, said Father Lager, who had recently returned from a visit to the Austria campus programs. “How do we continue to win them over in friendship? All of our lives are all about relationship. … Mother Teresa said the cry of the human heart is No. 1 to be loved and the greatest tragedy is when men and women are indifferent.”

Through FOCUS, young people “build relationships, hang out with each other and begin to find some common ground,” he said. “We have great conversations over coffee, go to concerts, play Frisbee, and after that with prayer and intention, we continue to build them up in the faith.”

FOCUS missionaries walk alongside young people, accompanying them “on this wonderful journey of faith — those are the things that really capture where our young men and women are,” Father Lager said.

Missionaries must make a two-year commitment to serve on a college campus after graduation. After that time, they may choose to move to another campus, begin a different career or enter religious life. They have to raise funds for their salaries. Each missionary goes through five weeks of intensive formation, that includes prayer and worship, and hands-on experience in evangelizing and team building. FOCUS says the training has been described as “one part boot camp, one part grad school and one part retreat.”

“Young people are dying to know the truth,” Father Lager said, adding that FOCUS is there to help them find that truth. “They have been sold a bill of goods that every need can be met by what the world has to offer, which is totally false. The real meaning comes about in not looking at No. 1 — me — but how can I give myself away in love and service?”

“We accompany them. You don’t do this by yourself. It’s all about what God does,” he said, adding FOCUS folks are collaborators with the Holy Spirit.

Out of that accompaniment have come vocations. Of the more than 20,000 FOCUS alumni so far, 600 have chosen a vocation as a priest or religious sister.

FOCUS is not a vocation ministry, Father Lager emphasized, but added that vocations are a byproduct of good Christian formation that FOCUS fosters.

Young Catholic men and women “want to know God’s will and to live out his call for them faithfully, whether that be marriage, priesthood or religious life,” said Sister Maria Juan Anderson, who recently professed first vows as a member of the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan.

She served as a FOCUS missionary at North Dakota State University in Fargo from 2007 to 2010. She also was involved with the outreach as a student at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

“Being able to talk and share life with religious women, and witness their joy during my time as a missionary helped me to discern my own vocation to religious life,” Sister Maria Juan told CNS in an email.

“By helping young people to develop the habit of daily prayer, and fostering a rich participation in the sacramental life, FOCUS aids young people in coming to a place where they can encounter the love of Christ that enables one to hear the voice of the Father inviting them to a life given to him in their vocation,” she said.

“The very mission of FOCUS — to know Jesus Christ and to fulfill his great commission — is the mission of every priest and religious man and woman. It is the call for every baptized Christian,” she added.

Sister Therese Marie of the Visitation also is a former FOCUS missionary. She is a member of the Community of Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal. She, too, recently made her first vows.

“My time serving with FOCUS greatly deepened my relationship with Jesus Christ. As missionaries we received excellent formation in discernment … (are) encouraged to have regular spiritual direction, and committed to daily Mass and Holy Hour,” she said. “And my vocation, of course, is a direct fruit of my relationship with Jesus. Experiencing the joy of serving as a missionary disposed me to hear Jesus inviting me to an even more radical following of him: as his bride.”

“In today’s culture, it’s becoming harder for young people to hear Jesus’ call — but he is still calling!” Sister Therese Marie told CNS in an email.

“The desire in young people to give themselves radically out of love is still present. They just need the formation and encouragement to hear God’s call and respond with joy and trust,” she added.

“Eagerness for Jesus is here,” said Father Kerry Wakulich, a FOCUS chaplain at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. “Christianity and life are one in the same in Oklahoma.”

Like Father Lager, he looked forward to the SEEK2017 conference. “Awesomeness” is how he described it. “I wish this existed when I was 19 and in the Air Force. My favorite part — getting stopped every five minutes to hear a confession. On one occasion, four hours later, I realized, ‘I haven’t moved.’”