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Making News
Meet Seminarian Will Cook
Seminarian Will Cook arrived at St. Anne Church this week and will spend the summer at our parish. Will was born in 1985 and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where his parents still live. He grew up Catholic, and while he received all the Sacraments of Initiation at the proper times, he says he didn't really begin to take his faith seriously until he was a junior in college. It was in 2009 that he graduated from Oklahoma State University with a bachelor's degree in Construction Management Technology, but it was in the years prior that he felt a desire to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps. After graduation and commissioning as a Marine Lieutenant, he spent several years in Okinawa, Japan, and finished up his four-year commission in Albany, Georgia.
After leaving the Marine Corps in 2013, Will spent a year as a Missionary with the Salesian organization: Volunteers in Discernment, Education, and Solidarity (VIDES). During the mission, he lived, worked, and worshiped with a community of nine Salesian priests and two brothers. The charism of the community was to teach underprivileged youth, which provided Will with a variety of opportunities to help out at their neighboring school and to also assist the priests in teaching catechism to the students. "I found this particular experience to be one of the most fulfilling endeavors of my life, and it was then, for the first time in my life, that I felt a strong calling to Holy Orders," Will says.
After returning from his mission trip, Will moved to Savannah and began working for a residential construction company. He says he continually found himself reflecting on the mission trip and thinking about what God was really calling him to do. After a continued period of discernment, Will decided that going to seminary was where he was supposed to be. "
And so here I am," he says. "I've just finished my second year, it was great, and I feel absolutely privileged to be able to spend the summer here in Columbus at St. Anne's! I'm really looking forward to getting to meet, talk, and worship with all of y'all this summer! God Bless!"
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