Mission Work in Mexico
Dusty Roads Lead to Spiritual Paradise
By Melissa Davis
For The Sooner Catholic

NORMAN — When most college students plan vacations to Mexico, they choose resort towns like Cancun instead of poverty-stricken villages with no beaches in sight.

But Rigo Gutierrez, a peer minister at the St. Thomas More Catholic Student Center in Norman, seeks his own version of paradise. He joins dozens of other University of Oklahoma Catholic students on long bus rides to dusty towns like Arteaga in the poorest parts of Mexico.

“They have a gorgeous church,” Gutierrez says of Arteaga. “Sometimes the showers run out of water when we stay there, depending on how many people show up. But the facilities are really great.”

And the people, he adds, are even better.

Gutierrez, a Shawnee native whose parents grew up in Mexico, visited Arteaga for the first time during a college mission trip three years ago. Feeling blessed with plenty himself, Gutierrez figured he would help Carey Blomquist, a three-year mission trip veteran, smiles out the poor in Arteaga by building them a church        with Lupita, a young girl from Arteaga, Coahuila, Mexico.
and bringing them much-needed supplies. But he soon learned that the people there are rich in so many ways already.

“There, the central focus is on faith and family,” says Michelle Goodwin, the OU campus minister who arranged the recent trips to Mexico. “They have nothing — and yet they offer everything. Their sense of hospitality is humbling.”

Always an avid church-goer, Gutierrez quickly found a home at St. Thomas More as a freshman at OU. The Catholic Student Center reaches out to students like Gutierrez with free dinners after Sunday night Mass and religious retreats, plus the annual mission trip to Mexico, throughout the year.

The campus ministry finances much of its activities with money raised through its annual “Some Enchanted Evening” gala, scheduled for Oct. 27 from 6 p.m. to midnight. Tickets include dinner, an auction, dancing to live music provided by Harvey and the Wallbangers and free baby-sitting and a carnival for the kids. Those interested should visit someenchantedevening.cmarket.com.

Through the mission trips, in particular, St. Thomas More campus ministry hopes to positively shape young adults at a crucial point in their lives.

“This is when they choose their friends, their vocations and their lifelong partners,” Goodwin says. “They are making so many important life decisions — and faith is one of them. So often, this is when they make the faith their own or they don’t.”

Despite all of the temptations that college life can bring, Gutierrez has felt his own faith grow stronger since arriving at OU. Moreover, Goodwin says, he has emerged as a shining leader already.

As a mere freshman, she says, Gutierrez quickly took charge during his first mission trip to Mexico. He set aside his nervousness and used his best Spanish to help the group cross the border, communicate with their bus drivers on the journey into Mexico and manage projects at the worksite once they arrived at their destination.

Today, Gutierrez can still hear one of the little girls there speaking Spanish back to him.

“We were handing out pencils, and somebody gave her two instead of one,” he recalls. “She could have just kept the extra. But she said, ‘You gave me one too many.’ That spoke volumes. It’s not about me-me-me, like it can be here. People there look out for the whole group, the whole community.”

Goodwin has seen college students change their own ways after encounters such as that. Some choose different majors so that they can  better serve the public. Others simply find new ways to put their current majors to better use. She remembers a pre-med student who went on to join Doctors without Borders, for example.

Still others offer up their free time years on down the road.

“I recently heard from a former student who is 27 now,” Goodwin says. “He works once a month serving food to hungry people downtown. He said the mission trip had a lot to do with that. It really does affect people. It becomes a part of their life.”