New Orleans, LA

Logistics
On March 22-28, 2009, a group will spend one week in New Orleans working on the hurricane reliefs efforts in the rebuilding of homes. Working through an organization called the St. Bernard Project, this will be an amazing opportunity. Depending on the stage of re-construction, the group will be gutting, painting or reconstructing anything else they need to do in order to get the house to a livable condition. Once they complete the stage of renovation on one house, they will move on to another house and continue this process until their time of one week is complete.

Mission with Vision
By helping out to those in our own country, the mission participants will encounter poverty and hardship in their own backyard. Through the service and works of mercy, we hope to enrich each member with a similar sense of mercy in their own lives and the desire to serve the poor wherever they are in life. Through daily mass and prayer we also hope to draw each member into a deeper relationship with Christ.

Next Year's Missions...

Looking into next year, the Missions program wants to expand its college student participation by doubling the involvement. We have proposed our trip destinations and we are hoping to organize a total of 14 mission trips between Spring Break and Summer of 2009.

I decided I wanted to share a little about each one of these missions and what they entail. I will begin with one is was started by my partner in the Missions program.

San Luis Potosi, Mexico

This is a mission filled with prayer, service, Mass, and fellowship all with the goal to build God's Church physically and spiritually. Participants have consistently been moved by the authenticity of Mexican hospitality, the mutual outpouring of generosity, and the impact of a people who deeply value friendship over efficiency. It has been very consistent as well that mission participants leave this mission with a new perspective on life.

After our mission in rural Mexico, we will travel to the heart of Mexico City, population 25,000,000, to begin pilgrimage to Our Lady of Guadalupe. We will tour Aztec ruins, right in the heart of Mexico City, and be reminded of the ancient Aztec culture that sacrificed hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in the name of false gods. It was only with the arrival of Christianity and ultimately the appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe that these sacrifices stopped. In Mexico City, Catholic Churches are built right over these ancient temples, often having been constructed out of the very same stones that constituted the Aztec structures. In a profound metaphor that reflects our history of salvation, the colonial structures of times past are being over taken by new modern development and human sacrifices in Mexico City have once again been legalized in the form of abortion. During our pilgrimage we will once again implore the intercession of Our Mother for the defense of life, the sanctification of our society, and the grace to be able to cry the gospel with our very lives.