Mission Trip to Cuatro Ciénegas: The Desert Is Not Empty
Camino de San José: Lessons from Cuatro Ciénegas
I thought I knew what I was looking for on the Camino. The desert had other plans.
One of the things I was most looking forward to on this trip was walking the Camino de San José.
The pilgrimage follows a series of stations across the desert, each one reflecting on a different moment in the life of St. Joseph. Our group had spent several mornings walking stretches of the route, stopping along the way to read reflections from a guidebook written by Fr. Daniel Brandenburg called The Way of St. Joseph.
Because of our travel delays earlier in the week, Dave and I missed the first part of the Camino. By the time we arrived, the group had already completed the first nine stations.
At first that bothered me more than I wanted to admit.
I’ve always had a bit of a competitive streak. If there are fourteen stations, I would really prefer to walk all fourteen. I wanted to do it the right way, from the beginning, not drop in halfway through and try to catch up. Missing nine of them felt like starting a movie halfway through, and I don’t like not knowing what I missed.
But when we finally joined the group for the remaining portion of the pilgrimage, something unexpected happened. The desert slowed everything down.
We started early in the morning while the air was still cool. The path wound through sandy terrain and scrub brush, with shadowy mountains rising in the distance. The land looked barren at first glance, dusty earth, cactus, endless sky.
The longer we walked, the more the desert revealed itself. Small flowers tucked between rocks. Birds moving across the open sky. Palm trees and tall grasses surrounding a narrow stream. Subtle colors in the sand and scrub that you would miss if you rushed past them.
The silence was what struck us most. At one point Dave mentioned he could hear his ears ringing, and I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I had noticed silence like that. Not just the absence of conversation, but no traffic, no background music, no hum of appliances, no constant buzz of phone notifications. There was only wind, footsteps, a water bottle shifting against a backpack, and the occasional voice reading a reflection about St. Joseph.
The stations themselves asked simple but surprisingly deep questions about Joseph’s life: Will I be prepared? Will I provide? Will I prevail? Will I rebuild?
As we walked, those questions started to feel less like abstract reflections and more like something uncomfortably close to home, exposing a few character flaws I would have preferred to ignore.
Prepared for what, exactly? I had spent the beginning of the trip trying to catch up, already aware that we had missed part of what was planned.
Provide in what way? In Carmen’s house, I had arrived with ideas of what help should look like and had to set most of them aside.
Prevail how? Not in any epic battle sense, but in the quieter work of staying present when things did not go according to plan.
Rebuild what? Sometimes that looked less like constructing something new and more like letting go of the assumptions I had brought with me.
I was left realizing how quickly I can slip into being a judgmental control freak, especially when I think I know what I’m doing. I kept coming back to that prayer: Empty me. Fill me. Use me. No one had warned me how raw that “empty me” part feels.
Joseph never says a word in Scripture, but his life answers those questions anyway, not through dramatic moments, but through steady, ordinary faithfulness in situations most of us would find overwhelming.
Somewhere along the path that morning we stopped for breakfast. When I imagined breakfast in the desert, I pictured something simple. Maybe a granola bar and a bottle of water. If we were really lucky, maybe a wrapped sandwich. Once again, my assumptions were completely wrong. This was becoming a pattern.
Our hosts had a full meal waiting for us under a shady tree in the middle of what felt like nowhere. Tables were set with linen cloths and napkins, hot scrambled eggs and meats were served on real plates, and there was freshly squeezed orange juice. We sat together, sharing a meal surrounded by miles of quiet desert.
It felt extravagant, and that word kept coming up throughout the trip.
The desert looked empty, but it held unexpected beauty. The schedule looked full, but it was filled with moments of stillness. The community we were visiting had limited resources, but the hospitality we experienced was generous beyond anything we expected. There was a kind of quiet abundance everywhere you looked.
Later that day, we visited the gypsum sand dunes just outside town. The sand there is brilliant white and incredibly fine, almost like powdered sugar. The top layer warms in the sun, but just below the surface the sand is cool to the touch. Standing there barefoot, digging my feet into cool sand, felt like discovering another small secret the landscape had been holding.
Over the next couple of days we swam in mineral pools, hiked up a rocky ridge to watch the sunrise, and lay back at night while a self-trained astronomer traced constellations across the sky with a laser pointer.
But it was that first quiet walk along the Camino that stayed with me.
Before coming to Cuatro Ciénegas, I tended to think of pilgrimages as something separate from leisure travel, something more serious, maybe even a little intimidating. Walking through the desert that morning made it feel simpler than that. It started to feel like a pilgrimage was less about where you go and more about how you move through it.
Paying attention to the landscape, to the people beside you, to the questions that surface when things finally get quiet. By the time we finished the last station that day, something had shifted.
We may have missed the beginning of the Camino in the desert, but the pilgrimage itself hadn’t been delayed. It had been unfolding the whole time, in missed flights, in unfamiliar homes, in small moments I would have overlooked if everything had gone according to plan. Out there in the quiet, it became easier to recognize.
The desert, it turns out, is not empty at all. You just have to slow down long enough to notice what’s already there.
This is part of a series about our mission trip to Cuatro Ciénegas, Mexico.
Previous: Carmen’s House
Next: Ripple Effects
If you’re curious about the reflections we followed along the Camino, they come from Fr. Daniel Brandenburg’s book, The Way of St. Joseph, which guided our time on the trail.
Kelly Brakenhoff is the author of 17 books and a seasoned ASL interpreter. She splits her writing energy between two series: cozy mysteries set on a college campus and children’s books featuring Duke the Deaf Dog.
In 2025, two of her children’s books were selected for the CBC Favorites Award Lists, honored by teachers and librarians nationwide for excellence in children’s literature. Parents, kids, and educators love the Duke the Deaf Dog books and activity guides because they introduce ASL and the Deaf community through engaging stories.
And if you enjoy a smart female sleuth, want to learn more about Deaf culture, or have lived in a place where livestock outnumber people, the Cassandra Sato Mystery series will have you connecting the dots faster than a group project thrown together the night before it’s due.
A proud mom to four adults, head of the dog-snuggling department, and grandma to a growing brood of perfectly behaved grandkids, Kelly and her husband call Nebraska home.