Jeff Armstrong

College I
Conception Seminary

My name is Jeff Armstrong; I'm 29 years old and am a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Omaha. My home parish is Immaculate Conception, where I was blessed to have great priests to help guide my way. I came into the Church when I was about 23 years old and have been wrestling with "the call" ever since. I visited a couple religious communities before looking into the diocese, never found peace there. I finally got in touch with the vocations director and made a visit to conception seminary where I immediately found calmness and peace. Even after all that it still took me a while to apply due to mainly being nervous about seminary, but I finally did it and I'm happy to be here now. It's a long process but filled with many wonderful graces that I have come to see now that I didn't recognize in the process, so don't be discouraged, keep your focus on Christ!

I tried for a long time to discern Gods will for me while still working and living in the world, but was surrounded by so many distractions and other things of day-to-day life that made it almost impossible to do. One day I was in, the next I wasn't. That's when I finally said that in order to be happy in life I have to discern where God wants me, not where I want myself and I knew the seminary is where I could answer that. That is one of the best things about the seminary for me. The total focus of the seminarian life is to bring you closer to God so you can hear Him speaking to you. We have a great prayer structure here, spiritual direction, and mass every day among other things. Here at the seminary we stay pretty busy, but you have some time for yourself also, whether you want to lift weights, go for a jog, or get in on one of the team sports activities that go on a regular basis. The brotherhood here is great too! You will be blessed to meet great guys who are just like you and in the same boat as you, trying to figure out Gods will in there life and to become the man God wants us all to be.

A couple of the greater pieces of advice that I can give to anyone out there thinking they may have a call is to (1) pray about it and make sure to center that prayer to Jesus in the form of a question…"Lord, what do you want in my life, where do you want me?" (2) is to get in touch with your pastor or the vocations director and let him know your feelings so you're not going at it alone. (3) is Holy Communion as often as possible.

I also can't stress enough to anyone how much grace comes from sitting in silence in front of the blessed sacrament and how much better you will be able to hear Our Lord speak to you. I ask anyone out there thinking about priesthood to trust in God and take that next step towards seminary, you won't regret it! If you have any questions feel free to contact me or any of my other brother seminarians, we'll be happy to help in any ways we can! I promise to pray for you, please do the same for me and may God bless you on your journey!