November

JACINTA VAN HECKE

DIR. OF CHILDREN'S MINISTRY

jvanhecke@stjerome.org or (262)569-3020

Hello! My name is Jacinta Van Hecke and I’m the new Director of Children’s Formation. I grew up in the area as a homeschooler, went to Thomas Aquinas College for my undergrad degree, then moved back to Milwaukee to be a Brew City Catholic Campus Missionary. I learned a lot as a campus missionary - particularly about relational ministry and about how to concretely bring my lifelong Catholic formation into my daily life in the normal adult world. Since then I’ve been working a number of part time jobs, but mostly nannying for young families in the Archdiocese. I have really loved working with young children and have become fascinated by their developmental stages and enormous capacity to receive what is good, true, and beautiful. That is what drew me to Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, which in turn drew me here.

For those who don’t know, CGS is an exceptionally powerful way of facilitating a transformative encounter and relationship for children with Christ in his Church. Children who are given this experience learn how to pray, they learn the essentials of what it means to be Catholic and they experience their faith as something beautiful, something to be treasured. I absolutely love CGS, I think that it is one of the most important things we can be doing in the Church and I’m very excited to be working on it here at St. Jerome.

SAM RASP

DIR. OF APOSTOLATE TO EVANGELIZATION

srasp@stjerome.org or (262)569-3020

Hello, my name is Sam Rasp, and I am the new Director of Apostolate to Evangelization. I was born in Kansas, though I moved around a lot as a kid - also living in Pennsylvania and eventually Kentucky, where I say I grew up. I started to truly get to know the Lord and His goodness during those early years. I was blessed to be influenced by a few exceptional priests during our first years in Kentucky. Throughout most of my early life, I felt that the Lord was asking me to discern the priesthood. Upon graduating high school, I entered seminary for the Diocese of Owensboro, Kentucky. I attended Bishop Simon Bruté College Seminary at Marian University in Indianapolis. After my second year in seminary, I felt that the Lord was asking me to discern the Vocation of marriage, so I left seminary. In 2016 I graduated with a Bachelors in Theology from Marian. I was then hired by the Fellowship of Catholic University Students(FOCUS) to be a missionary on a college campus. Over the course of five years, I served on college campuses in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where I helped cultivate community, build up small group Bible studies, and mentor men as they grew in their relationship with the Lord. Towards the beginning of my time with FOCUS, I was honored to meet the woman that has become my wife, Libby. In 2021, after deciding to leave FOCUS, my Libby and I moved to Indianapolis where I took the job as Coordinator of Evangelization and Discipleship for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. After taking some time to pray and then discern together this summer, we decided that the Lord was leading back to Wisconsin, where Libby grew up. I am excited to get started and get to know all of you and for us to get to know the Lord even more fully together!