As I write this eBulletin article, I am closing the day of work on Thursday in Tijuana for our mission trip here with 35 other missionaries of which eleven are from St. Simon Parish. It has been an amazing experience since we arrived here. Each day brings its own graces where we experienced Christ in unique and powerful ways in the encounter with others. There are so many graced moments, it is hard to contain them in a single bulletin article, but I will just give you a snippet of some of the highlights.
We all arrived on Saturday and received a delicious meal cooked by Joan Mibach, Tina Lipscomb and their kitchen crew. We stay on the grounds of a large parish called Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish and it is led by a dynamic pastor called Fr. Jesse. He was born in Los Angeles and joined a religious order of priests called the Oblates of the Immaculate Conception based in Texas and Fr. Jesse was sent to this parish which they have run for many decades. On Sunday morning, we started our mission by joining Fr. Jesse and his community for their 10:30am Sunday morning Mass. It was a powerful experience, jammed packed church with people singing and actively participating in all aspects of the Mass. It was an inspiring homily about the love of God knowing no boundaries and encouraging the people to remain faithful to Jesus in their hearts and lives.
We then went to the work yard (and bodega) to finish the painting of the wooden frames for the three houses we would build here. On Monday we loaded up all the materials and started the build at the first house. Each of the three homes were framed in pieces and then pre-assembled by the local staff so that we could deliver them to sites one day at a time and assemble them on site with minimal work. After we assemble the wooden frames of walls, then we put on the roof, install the plumbing, electricity and finalize with touching up the paintwork. It is extraordinary how the staff of the Tijuana Ministries Team pre-build these homes to such precision that we can deliver and assemble them in a single day without a single mistake!
Today, we have just completed the main build of the third of three houses we have built while here in Tijuana. We will finish up the plumbing and electricity tomorrow and then finish with touchup painting and then give the keys to their home in a formal blessing and ceremony.
While it was a week of hard work in the blistering sun of 80-90 degrees, it was also incredibly rewarding and successful from the construction point of view. Even more so, it was a great success from the perspective of our conversion experience as a mission trip. It was incredibly powerful as we encountered the face of Christ in each of these families and the staff of the Tijuana Ministries (BASICS) and all of the ministers at this inspirational parish.
Each evening we had a different group give us a short presentation on their ministries in the parish. One that will remain with me forever is Roman and Antonio who shared the ministry to the AIDS and TB victims. They have a center that accommodates 144 people with a waiting list of another 100 people, many of them young and frail. They were so inspirational in their presentation to us that a group of us went to visit their center and walked through their new testing TB clinic and visited with the patients. There is so much love in that facility it is truly moving. The head of the program, Roman, is like the Mother Teresa of Tijuana and he does not reject anybody who comes to his facility – all are accepted. He is a walking saint who himself is a graduate from the program and recovering from AIDS and drug abuse, now happily married, and running this amazing place.
Another inspirational presentation was given by the parish core team of leaders, all of them young adults who are psychologists, therapists, youth retreat leaders, young adult retreat leaders, music ministers and more who minister to their community of over 100,000 people! Wow! These young people all came from the same community in which they now serve and continue to give back. This place is an amazing place of discipleship in action or in secular terms pay-it-forward in action!
Finally, the lasting memory of the people here is the joy they have in their hearts for Christ and their life. They have so little, but they are always smiling and laughing. We have so much, but we struggle with so many issues. It would be great to have more of us come and experience this place of poverty and joy! I look forward to sharing more with you this weekend at the Masses and hopefully inspiring more of our parishioners to travel with us next year.
God Bless,
Fr. Brendan