Jesuit Experience Trip Brings "Beautiful" Heartbreak

MAGAZINE ALUMNI COLLEGE HILL SPRING THE

JESUIT EXPERIENCE TRIP EXPLORES MIGRATION,

BRINGS ‘BEAUTIFUL’ HEARTBREAK

SPRING/SUMMER 2022

MAGAZINE ALUMNI COLLEGE HILL SPRING THE

Last October’s Jesuit Experience Trip to El Paso, Texas, affected Lucia Reyes ’21 profoundly. “It broke my heart, in a beautiful way,” she said.

“Your heart aches for anyone suffering. But it also made me understand my own impact and my role now as a missionary in Mobile. So I’m really grateful overall.”

Reyes, a Miami native, studied business at Spring Hill. She now works as a missionary for Vagabond Missions Mobile, part of a national organization that ministers to urban teens. She made the Jesuit Experience Trip (JET) as a postgraduate member of the Sodality group that she had joined as an undergraduate.

Spring Hill started the JET program in 2016 to connect students with Jesuit ministries to the poor and marginalized within the United States. Campus Ministry operates the program as well as the International Service Immersion Program for trips outside the country. Other alumni who joined students on the El Paso journey are Sofia Ruiz-Castaneda ’18, Joseph Crapanzano ’17, Alexander Scalco ’18, Jay Williams ’19, Gabrielle Smith ’17 and Stephanie Morris ’69.

The trip was organized by Rev. Matthew Baugh, S.J., for the Sodality, and in El Paso by the Encuentro Project, which tries to increase understanding of migration. Rev. Rafael Garcia, S.J., created and directs the Encuentro Project.

The visitors talked to migrant mothers waiting out their immigration proceedings in a shelter in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from El Paso. Participants also visited the border wall and met with priests, nuns and lay people, including immigration attorneys, U.S. Border Patrol agents and migrant advocates.

Reyes said she appreciated the immersive look. Migration means something personal to her. Her family emigrated from Cuba to the United States in 1959.

“I was pretty trepidatious because I didn’t want the trip to become an opportunity to feed our egos or be self-serving,” she said. “We were able to look at it in a holistic way and humanize it through the people we met there.”

She said her group did a lot of listening. “I think it’s our role to not assume the needs of someone but allow them to tell you who they are and what they need.”

Gathering information matters, she said. “There is objective truth. If we lose sight of that, if everyone’s allowed their own versions of the truth, we lose the idea of a common good, which is how we come together as a community.”