Mission Trip to Cuatro Ciénegas: Arriving When the Mission Has Already Started

Camino de San José: Lessons from Cuatro Ciénegas

We arrived late, tired, and already behind. The work had started without us.

After twenty-eight hours of travel, reroutes, missed flights, a cheap hotel, and maybe four hours of sleep, we finally arrived in Monterrey, Mexico. I would love to say we stepped off the plane refreshed and ready for our mission trip.

That would be a lie.

Dave and I stumbled off the plane slightly disoriented, with the vague suspicion that the entire experience had been designed specifically to test our perseverance. And we still weren’t there.

Outside, the air felt warm compared to the snow and wind we had left behind in Nebraska, although everyone assured us this was actually cool weather. After the chaos of airports and missed connections the day before, waiting for our driver almost felt peaceful. Spanish filled the hotel lobby around us. With high school Latin and previous travels, my conversational range closely resembled that of a polite toddler.

Words like: Gracias. Muy bien. Adiós. Thank goodness for Google Translate.

Two hours later, Rolando arrived, and we began the three-and-a-half-hour drive north to Cuatro Ciénegas. The city around the airport was all movement. Industrial plants. Construction cranes. Traffic that seemed to operate on confidence more than lane markings. Cars and trucks slid around each other with the ease of people who understood the system. I clearly had a lot to learn.

Soon the landscape opened up. The bumpy road stretched across wide desert plains, and in the distance mountains rose out of the flat land like giant dinosaur spines. We passed open lots filled with old vehicles, their rusted shells stacked in heaps while weeds and debris gathered around them.

At first the desert looked sparse. But the longer we drove, the more I noticed the subtle color and texture changes. What had seemed empty was really just quiet land.

There was no slow introduction to the work. No easing into the experience. We had arrived late, and the mission was already underway.

The rest of our group, along with a video crew from Catholic World Mission, had already been there for a day, led by Fr. Daniel Brandenburg, the missionary priest guiding the trip. Everyone else seemed to know where to go and what was happening. We were bleary-eyed and trying to catch up.

First we visited the Plan 2040 offices, where local leaders and partner organizations are working to support families in the community. One of the biggest challenges is father absence. We learned that in the Plan 2040 program, a large percentage of families are missing a father in the home for all kinds of reasons, both cultural and economic. Some men leave to work in the United States and send money back, some are in prison, and some simply drift away.

While responding to emergency needs is important, the long term goal is to build something stable. The programs support mothers and children, but they also invest in fathers, helping men learn how to be present, responsible, and engaged in their families. Local mentors and guides walk with families over time.

Putting faces to the numbers changed the tone of the trip. There was no sense that we had arrived to save anybody. We were stepping into work that had already begun, in families, in the fatherhood programs, and in the daily, unglamorous effort to build something stronger for the future. We were not the point. We were just there to help for a little while.

After the orientation, we split into work teams and headed to two different houses where families needed help. At our place, Dave joined the painting crew. I joined a group cleaning and organizing inside the home of a young mother I’ll call Carmen. She lives there with her younger brother, her three-year-old daughter, Rosa, and another baby girl due any day.

The men started outside, clearing hundreds of bottle caps and bits of trash from the dirt yard and painting the stucco walls.

Inside, we sorted and folded children’s clothes, organized toys, and prepared a crib for the new baby. Dust floated through the air as we worked, trying to make some kind of dent in the space within only a couple of hours.

The biggest obstacle was my instinct to organize, fix, and make things look “better.” I needed a quick reality check to stay humble and slow my assumptions down.

Later that evening, we hurried to Mass, where the local bishop was celebrating confirmations. Several of the men receiving the sacrament had come through the fatherhood or substance abuse recovery programs connected to Plan 2040. Watching their joyful faces added another layer to the stories we had heard earlier that day.

Faith here is lived out in real, messy families with complicated stories, and still, somehow, hopeful futures.

After Mass we drove to Tierra Maria, a vineyard and event space on the edge of the desert. Tables were set outside under the open sky. The food was incredible, local dishes paired with wines produced right there in the valley. Dessert was ice cream drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, which was new to me but turned out to be excellent.

It felt extravagant after the last two days. And yet that contrast became one of the themes of the trip. The desert looks barren at first glance. But look more closely and you find abundance: vineyards, springs, good food, generous people, and stars bright enough to fill the whole sky.

That first night ended quietly.

A few of us gathered back at the hotel and shared a bottle of wine before heading to bed. The day had been long, and the journey even longer. We had missed the beginning of the pilgrimage and arrived late, tired, and a little overwhelmed. I still felt a little like the kid who shows up to class late and has no idea what page everyone is on.

But something was already becoming clear. The mission hadn’t been waiting for us to arrive. God had been working there long before our plane ever left Nebraska.

And somehow, after all the chaos of airports and delays, we had stepped into it right on time.

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This is part 2 of a 6 part series about our mission trip to Cuatro Ciénegas, Mexico.

Previous: Stuck in Terminal B
Next: Carmen’s House