By Gretchen Keiser

Six Hispanic young people from the archdiocese, accompanied by their priest, Father Brian Pierce, OP, spent their vacations in a Mexican village sharing faith and the ordinary lives of the people.

The village, Santuario, in interior southern Mexico, near Guatemala, is served by lay catechists and is normally visited by a priest once a month or every six weeks.

Father Brian and the group spent a week there, offering Mass and the opportunity for confession daily and leading a mission that took its theme from the elements of daily life and faith -- the corn that is the substance of life, the devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the home altars known as "altarcitos" that express family faith.

The group also had a chance to live communally, sleeping on cots, in a house without running water and with little privacy, cooking for themselves and washing clothes by hand.

"At 6:30 in the morning, little eyes were peering in. They were so fascinated by this group that had come to live with them" Father Brian said. "They wanted to watch us cook, watch us pray and to watch us meet. The little kids would snuggle up against us."

Mornings the group went out in pairs to visit homes, "to let them know who we were and to learn about their life," said Silvia Garcia of Sacred Heart parish, Atlanta.

Afternoons, while Father Brian heard confessions, the six young adults from the Hispanic youth group led a program that used drawings to bring together children, young adults, and adults and to reflect on faith. Using drawings based on the theme of the day, the group would color and then talk about how they saw the topic as a part of faith.

The themes were designed to reveal the strong faith elements already present in popular religiosity, but to give them worth and new insight. "They are teethed on Our Lady of Guadalupe," Father Brian observed, "but need to be reminded that she was Indian and spoke the language of the poor, that God is so close to them."

In the evening the community would gather for Mass that would also integrate the emphasis of the day; once bringing a picture or statue from a home "altarcito" to be blessed, or another time, when family was emphasized, forming three large circles with the children in the middle, the adults laying hands upon young adults, and the young adults laying hands on the children, to show how the community grows up and cares for the children.

In addition to Ms. Garcia, the other Hispanic youth taking part were Edwin Marrero, Iris Rodriguez, and Billy Saldaña from Immaculate Heart of Mary parish, Atlanta.

The Atlanta group was part of a larger community organized by Father Mario Vizcaino of Miami, who has been taking people from the U.S. to Mexico for 20 years.

The program began when Father Mario went to give vacation relief to a priest in the city of Macuspana in the state of Tabasco, Mexico. "But the priest he filled in for did not go on vacation, he went to the 'rancherias' (villages)" that he was unable to serve the rest of the time, Ms. Garcia said. "This so impressed Father Mario" that he began organizing mission groups to come to Mexico and visit the "rancherias" in a planned, supportive way.

This year over 40 people went, many on repeat trips. Leaving from Miami, where Father Mario leads the Southeast Pastoral Institute, they flew to Mexico City for two days of orientation and then spent several days in Macuspana for intensive preparation on the culture, religious practices and background of the people they would stay with. All were bilingual and Father Brian pointed out that he was the only "gringo" in his group.

Ms. Garcia, who is Mexican, said she saw a part of her country and people she had never seen before. "I lived in a big city. I was aware of it, but it was like, 'So What?' Now it has really touched me that it's my people."

One day four in the group were taken on horseback from Santuario to a more remote area for a daylong mission. The trip, unnerving to the city dwellers, revealed to them that some people had been walking the distance twice a day across flood-swollen rivers in order to attend the daily mission in Santuario. The walk took one and one-half to two hours, Father Brian said, and people would leave the Mass at 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. to walk home.

He was awed by the village's head catechist, Don Antonio, a barefoot "machetero" who made his living as a day laborer working with his machete to clear fields or cut down corn stalks, but who would gather the people for the Scripture services and pray for them and doctor their broken bones by setting and massaging them. "For the first time I understood what the Scripture means, 'a man without guile,'" Father Brian said.

The last night following the closing Mass, they experienced "one of the most tender things that has ever happened in my life," he said. There was no farewell surprise party, but the people stayed for two hours. "The children went and sat by themselves and cried. I knew they understood that something important had happened this week. That love had been shared. Don Antonio began to cry. It was very quiet."

Father Mario said, "Your living with them symbolizes God living with them. If these foreign people can come and sit with us and go to church with us and cry with us and they come in the name of God, then God comes and sits with us and prays with us and cries with us."

"In the encounter, God was present," Father Brian said. "We walked away with as much as they did."