This Spring, 2023, I was blessed with the opportunity to join the Project Mexico organization as a member of their long-term staff. At face value, that might sound like a trivial matter, but in all truthfulness, it’s a miracle, since just a year ago I wasn’t aware Project Mexico existed. 

Last December, while searching for summer internships, I recalled a comment a friend had made about ministry work. Without a name to search for, I searched until I discovered Project Mexico’s website. I promptly filled out an application for a summer-long internship, unrelated to my field of study, on the opposite side of the continent in a foreign country.

Project Mexico asked me to come for the spring break build and then to stay on as an intern for the summer. At last, I found myself boarding a one-way flight to Tijuana, Mexico. God works in mysterious ways, and “in a general sense, the Orthodox Church considers everything which is in and of the Church as sacramental or mystical.” It is all a great mystery that our simple minds will never be able to fully comprehend; thus, man was made to have faith in God.

Genuine faith is not a blind leap in the dark but rather confidence in the goodness and power of God, or the existential everyday trust in the promises and gifts of God. He is “the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

What else do we require?

Personally, I know I have been blessed greatly. The seasons between homebuilding feels very different and beautiful in a peaceful way. I’ve been working with our homebuilding coordinator, interviewing families and learning the life stories of the people we serve. I’ve also been working with the children of St. Innocent Orphanage, who force me to examine my shortcomings and to grow. Most importantly, I’ve been given the opportunity to live and work with people who desire to serve Christ.

“What is ‘experience’ in spiritual life, dearest Father?”

“A comb that you acquire when you go bald.”

“So, isn’t it useless?”

“No, because you can then use it to comb the hair of others!”

--Saint Porphyrios Testimony of Metropolitan Neophytos Morfou

With God’s help, let us walk by faith, in humility and in gratitude. Let us not bury and hide our talents, but “whatever we do, do it all for the glory of God.” Let us expose our darkness to the light of Christian truth, “for whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord.” Amen.

Written by Margarita Mavroeidi - Long-term Missionary Staff