During this weekend’s conference, Mark and Joyce Markowski from St. Gerard Majella Parish in Kirkwood, MO are serving as what they affectionately call “Priest Ubers,” though their official title is “Priest Hospitality.” This is the 4^th year that they have been helping in this way, though it is the 5^th year attending Steubenville for each of them. Joyce has also attended previously an usher, and Mark as a chaperone. They have been married for 30 years.

Continue reading

This year, Christopher Kennebeck is serving as our Liturgy MC (Master of Ceremonies) for both of our conferences; his job includes not only planning our liturgies, but making sure that they run smoothly. He attended three of our conferences as a teen participant, and this is his second conference as a seminarian staff member.

This fall he will be a junior at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, and, God willing, will be ordained a priest seven years from now.  When he is not working as our Liturgy MC, you can find him hanging out with other seminarians, going to the movies with his brother, watching his sister perform in theater, playing disc golf, baseball, and dodgeball, as well as singing in the seminary choir.

His two favorite parts of the weekend are seeing the joy on everyone’s face as they come out of confession, and the men’s talk.

Continue reading

Mary Kate has been coming to SteubySTL since 2006, and this weekend is her 25th Steubenville conference!

If you were here last weekend – or if you watched the Livestream – you know that she was the female worship leader (and she killed it, by the way). Between conferences this year, she has been volunteering her time as a liaison, helping with LEAD. And if you are here this weekend, be sure to say hello to her in the bookstore (and go back and view the Livestream of worship last weekend; did you hear that she killed it? well, she did.) Besides those roles, she has also been here as a teen participant and as a young adult chaperone.

When she is not here at Steubenville, Mary Kate spends her time working as the Campus Minister at Notre Dame High School, an all girls Catholic high school in St. Louis Missouri. She also leads praise and worship for various ministries, youth groups, retreats, and conferences. She loves to listen to Taylor Swift albums on repeat until she comes out with her next one. “RIP the old Taylor, I miss you”. She loves to get creative by painting, songwriting, sewing, playing guitar, beading, bedazzling (not really, but she wants to bring it back), decorating new spaces, etc…

Continue reading

This is Missy’s 6th summer volunteering at SteubySTL. Most of these summers involved helping the Social Media crew led by Paul Masek, who is her brother-in-law! He gives her a new responsibility every summer. She said, “Either he doesn’t like what I did the summer before, or he just likes to mix things up. I have no clue!” (spoiler alert: she’s just really good at a lot of things).

She has written for the blog, run the SnapChat stories, and this year she has been updating the Instagram Feed and helping her sister Lisa Masek take pictures on week two. So, if you see her lugging around a big camera, strike a pose – you could be on Instagram!

Continue reading

Ross and Debbie have been married for 23 years, and they are members of Immaculate Conception Parish in Dardenne Prairie, MO (aka ICD). Ross has been volunteering at SteubySTL for 12 years, and Debbie has been for 13 years.

At our conferences, their forte is Speaker Hospitality. They find it fun to get to know the speakers personally and enjoy serving their needs by taking logistical concerns away from them and allowing them to focus on the spiritual emphasis they are so good at providing.

Continue reading