You Helped Us Exceed Our Goal—Here’s What It Means
December 29, 2025Safe Haven: Meet an Aim Higher Scholar Family
The Aim Higher Scholar Series is an invitation for supporters and friends to meet some of the children and families who benefit from our renewable, need-based scholarships. We are deeply grateful to these families for sharing their stories.
The Morris Family: St. Maximilian Kolbe
Six years ago, Cole and Rachel Morris left Texas for Minnesota, carrying with them the hope of a fresh start for their three children.
“The Aim Higher Scholarships we are receiving have not just been life-changing, but life-saving.”
Their oldest daughter, Bryn, no longer felt safe at her former school, and the family urgently needed an environment far from the trauma she had endured. Their search led them to several Catholic schools—but when they walked into St. Maximilian Kolbe, they immediately sensed something special.
Referring to Bryn's first visit to the school, Rachel recalls: “She loved it. Bryn has a lot of anxiety about being away from me, yet she had a great day. She told me, ‘It’s different, but… I felt safe.’ ”
That single word—safe—was everything. For the first time, Rachel felt at peace sending her daughter to school.
Simultaneously, the family was searching for a handicap-accessible home for Rachel’s mother. The question of how they would afford a new school and a new home weighed heavily on the family. One day, Rachel looked out the kitchen window of a home they were touring for potential purchase and saw the steeple of St. Maximilian Kolbe rising just beyond the trees. At that moment, she knew: This is our home.
Aim Higher Scholarships made that home—and that safety—possible. “The scholarships help so much because they allow me to keep my three children in Catholic school,” Rachel shares. Thanks to donor support, Bryn (7th), Ivy (4th), and Roman (2nd) now attend St. Maximilian, where the family has also become active parish members and newly initiated Catholics.
Their journey toward safety opened the door to an even deeper journey of faith. “All three kids were baptized, and the two oldest received their First Holy Communion on the feast day of St. Maximilian Kolbe,” Rachel says. Cole and Rachel officially joined the Catholic church as of April 2025.
Now, the conversations around their dinner table reflect a family growing in faith together. “The knowledge and faith they bring home challenge all of us to keep seeking the true, the good, and the beautiful.”
