MISSIONER NEWSLETTER – Spring 2025
Rick Dixon, U.S.-Mexico Border
Yuliana, 14, holds up her favorite book, The Chronicles of Narnia. Between school and working at a flower shop, she still finds time to lose herself in stories—proof that the love of reading knows no limits.
MEXICALI, MEXICO—Due to generous donations of books and funds from people on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border, a library is blooming in the Colorado Desert, which is part of the larger Sonoran Desert, where Mexicali is located in Baja California, Mexico.
Our collection at the Parish of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe includes children’s books, chapter books for adolescents, novels, biblical studies, and formation for parenting and for peace and justice.
The library engages parents and children in forming stronger relationships through activities for the entire family. Presently a group of five children bring a diverse group of family members—a grandmother, a grandfather, a father, an aunt, an uncle, a mother, and a sister—to the library after the Sunday 12 p.m. Mass.
The group is building bridges between Spanish and English through bilingual books. We are presently reading Peace is An Offering, which explores the many ways we experience peace in our lives. Our reading list also includes Oscar Romero, Chico Mendez, Martin Luther King Jr., Caesar Chavez, Mahatma Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Harriet Tubman, and others.
Families gather after Sunday Mass at the Parish of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, exploring bilingual books and sharing stories that strengthen relationships, bridge cultures, and open new worlds of possibility.
On Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m, we meet with 30 adolescents for story time. It’s tough to find books that capture the attention of this age group, but 14-year-old Yuliana guided me to C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia.
She began her new year by reading the entire series (800 pages) in a week. Wonder, adventure, and the epic battle between good and evil kept her spellbound, and when I asked her what her favorite book in the series was, she immediately said, The Nephew of the Magician.
I knew what our next story-time read would be, though in much smaller increments than Yuliana’s.
Besides going to school, Yuliana works at a flower shop to help support her grandmother with whom she lives. “Where do you find time to read?” I asked her. She shrugged her shoulders and told me she couldn’t put the book down.
I asked her what character she identified with and she immediately said, “Polly. We’re both curious and love to explore.”
I shared with her that I liked C.S. Lewis’ description of “the forest between worlds” as a pleasant and warm silence that is full of life, where you can almost hear the trees grow. He contrasts this with other worlds, where the silence is cold and empty.
Yuliana smiled a pleasant, warm smile and then held up the book for a picture.
The library’s goal is to build reading and communication skills, giving kids and their parents a wider vision and choices of what their community and our world can be.
Some of those choices may continue to be around survival and migration, which people from the neighborhood often choose, but they also may be to organize locally and promote literacy and better educational opportunities right here.
Yuliana along with 50 other children and their families are a living example of how reading is a practice in nonviolence, or as Carl T. Rowan wrote: “Reading has liberated more people than all the wars in the world.”
Please consider supporting my mission work at the U.S.-Mexico border with a donation through the link below.
I invite you to walk with me as a “COMPANION IN MISSION.” Companions in Mission are friends and generous donors who give financial gifts on a regular (usually monthly) basis. For more information, visit Become a Companion in Mission. Thank you so much for your generosity!
Rick Dixon is a Maryknoll lay missioner working in several migrant ministries at the U.S.-Mexico border in Mexicali, Mexico.
