CAMPAIGN UPDATE #2: With a few days still to go in our Spring Break 2026 Match Campaign, we’re less than 10% from our goal of $50,000; please join the match TODAY! If we hit our initial goal as we head into the weekend, we will unlock an additional challenge pledge of $15,000 from another generous member of our Board. With your help, we can now raise $65,000 for our young men and women, and have that amount doubled. THANK YOU!!

There is a strong outdoor component to each of this week’s trips, as you would expect, but there is a wide range of options from which to choose, including some trips that are more deliberately contemplative than others. Take the trip we’re highlighting today, for example:

“Spend a week in the desert in semi-retreat, focusing on the masculine heart, on the need all men have for challenge and for adversity (especially young men), and on what it means to live out missionary life in today’s culture. There will be numerous opportunities for high adventure, as well as ample time for personal prayer. And we will spend our evenings discussing COR’s ‘four pillars,’ or underlying principles of ministry: wonder, community, leadership, and identity.” (For those who are unfamiliar with the moniker, “COR” stands for the College’s outreach program, COR Expeditions.)

The nine young men on this particular trip are using a beautiful property near Moab, Utah, as their base of operations, traveling out and back again throughout the course of the week. On Tuesday, for example, they headed off to Bullet Canyon in the morning for some hiking before returning to their “home base” for an afternoon of solo meditation and reflection, and an evening of formal programming. (Many of the week’s programmatic elements are being led by Sean Wood, who serves as Director of Formation for COR.)

As COR experiences with so many of its trip participants, the four pillars mentioned above are both uniquely experienced in the wilderness and are widely under attack throughout today’s culture. The nine students on this trip have the opportunity to take these few days in the back country to reflect on each of the four principles (with a particular focus on the pillar of Identity) and to come to a better understanding of the role they play in their (current) lives as students and of how they will shape their (future) lives after graduation.

As Sean likes to remark, his favorite words of Jesus come from John 10:10: “I have come that you may have life and have it to the full!” And the next few days in in the back country will certainly be filled with life. “My hope and desire for this trip is to help these young men find the meaning and purpose of their lives in Jesus,” he says, and the group plans to explore a variety of readings and reflections to further that conversation: A Chapter of Vices and Virtues by Friar Giles; excerpts on true friendship from St. Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life; John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart (for a more contemporary look at Christian masculinity); Theodore Roosevelt’s “Citizenship In A Republic” speech, perhaps better known as “The Man in the Arena;” and C.S. Lewis’s “Learning in War-Time.”

These works (along with Sean’s remarks each evening) are intended to help the group reflect on what holistic, Christian, masculine formation looks like, and on how young men in today’s culture can develop and preserve “a heart for mission” in a world in desperate need of it.

Many of the young people who graduate from Wyoming Catholic have just such a heart for mission. Denver’s Father Trevor Lontine and Father Andrew Westerman of the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter are particularly obvious examples, of course, but our “Alumni Success Stories” page is filled with young men (and women!) who are transformed by the True, Good, and Beautiful things they experienced here at Wyoming Catholic College. Please consider joining this year’s Spring Break Match Campaign to support these young people and the extraordinary formation they are receiving here in Lander. And remember that everything we receive during this week will be MATCHED by generous members of our Board of Directors, doubling the impact of your gift up to $50,000 and beyond!

Gifts made through the online form HERE will be automatically assigned to the Match Campaign, and will appear in the Goal Meter at the top of the Campaign website as it is updated each day. If you would prefer to make a gift over the phone, via check, or through another philanthropic vehicle (such as a gift of stock or a mutual fund transfer), please contact the Office of Institutional Advancement at oia@wyomingcatholic.edu or by phone at (877) 332-2930, and the Advancement team will ensure your gift is assigned to the match.