DUDES! Stoked to be here. I'm (Fr.) Jared Cooke, 37 years old, and into my 8th year as a Catholic Priest. Sorry...I'm gonna be THAT guy and "copy and paste" my BIO below. I've been speaking internationally for a while now, so I have it handy for intros like this! Bonus points if you actually read it all the way through. HA! Looking forward to journeying with you guys! Let's GO! "Fr. Jared Cooke was born in Denver, Colorado, but moved to North Austin at the age of 11, spending his most formative years thereafter growing up here in Central Texas. He is a proud 3rd generation Texas A&M Aggie and is now the Pastor and Director of Catholic Campus Ministry at Our Lady of Wisdom University Parish at Texas State University, after serving for a year at The University of Texas Catholic Center as Associate Director of Campus Ministry. Fr. Jared has a great passion for preaching, teaching and evangelization and loves finding new and exciting ways to make faith convincing and relevant for people in our fast-paced and increasingly secular society. As a result, Fr. Jared has had the opportunity to work extensively and especially with youth, young adults and men’s ministries throughout the country. Over the past six years, he has also traveled around the world speaking and preaching at numerous retreats, conferences, camps, missions and workshops, in addition to serving as Parochial Vicar at St. Joseph in Bryan and more recently, St. Thomas More in North Austin. He also served as the Chaplain of the "Mercy of God Healing and Prayer Center," a ministry for Healing and Deliverance, in the Diocese of Austin, for two years and continues to be active in the same work throughout all his ministry fronts. Fr. Jared also continues to be very active with Catholic evangelization ministry across several social media and Catholic/Christian Media platforms; most recently he was interviewed on EWTN’s The Catholic Sphere about Evangelization in the age of Social Media. He also loves soccer, music, fitness, film/cinematography, hole-in-the-wall food joints to fine dining cuisine and everything in between, the great outdoors, traveling to new places around the world (his bucket list will forever be a mile long) and is a self-described “coffee snob!” When he finds downtime, you will likely find him spending time with friends or relaxing out in the Texas countryside at his family’s Vineyard and Winery in Weimar, Texas."

@Ryan Meador And what a total "prayer highlight" of my life it truly was! Prayer is beyond powerful man! You and I connecting was a total "God move" too - He lines things up when we least expect!