Mackenzie Hunter

My story starts almost a decade ago. I was in high school, newly on fire for the faith, and I loved to write.

I thought about starting the blog for a long time, but it took me a while to take the leap. In January 2018, during my freshman year of college, I started a WordPress blog called The Abundant Adventure. The best way to describe it was an overflow of my prayer life.

At first it was just a hobby. But that summer, while I was home with more free time, I began investing in it. I cleaned up the design, bought the domain acaffeinatedcatholic.com, and started writing more regularly, sharing posts on my personal Instagram and sending people to the full version on my website.

I was surprised to see people begin following because of the writing.

I had resisted making a separate page because I never wanted faith to feel like a different life from my real one. But even though the numbers were small, I could tell the Lord was doing something with my little yes. So in January 2019, I created the new account.

As time went on, fewer people were reading blogs, and the content slowly moved onto social media.

For years the growth was steady. Then one Reel randomly took off, and about a year and a half ago things began to accelerate. It wasn’t huge, but it was enough to open doors I never imagined I would walk through.

This past year has been the wildest yet. I traveled to Rome for the Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and stepped into conversations at the Vatican about media and the Church. I met Edmundo Reyes, which led to working on set in Spain creating content for Seeking Beauty. And I took the leap into running my own business full-time, trusting that if the Lord had opened the door, He would sustain it.

I’ve always cared deeply about the intersection of digital media and the Catholic Church. I studied strategic communications and Catholic studies, and almost every paper I wrote lived in that space.

Five years ago, I could have told you I was passionate about this. What I couldn’t have told you was what the dream would look like, because I had no idea how God would use me.

It’s incredible to now be living the reality of serving the Church through communications and media.

Looking back, I can see His hand in places I once thought were random, in dreams I didn’t yet understand, in doors I never could have opened on my own.

And something tells me He’s just getting started.

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