Children of Prayer, Children of Peace
Rick Dixon, shares the beauty he recently witnessed while leading a prayerful retreat with children in El Salvador.
Dust trails toward the heart of God
From mountain villages to dense urban neighborhoods in El Salvador, Maryknoll lay missioner Rick Dixon accompanies children whose courage and joy reveal God’s glory in the everyday. Through broken-down buses, makeshift libraries, and a growing circle of young “librarians,” he witnesses a community stitching together learning, belonging, and hope—one small hand at a time.
Angel Mountain
In a time of profound personal transition, missioner Rick Dixon reflects on loss, vocation, and the thin veil between this life and the next. As he leaves his ministry in Mexicali, Mexico, and returns to El Salvador, Rick shares the deeply moving story of his late niece, Kirsty Angel Mountain—her struggles with mental illness, her spiritual insight, and the lasting imprint she leaves on his heart and mission.
Even for the dead there are walls
Along the U.S.–Mexico border in California’s Imperial Valley, missioner Rick Dixon describes how the human cost of immigration policy is devastatingly clear. Here, steel barriers and irrigation canals claim the lives of those simply trying to survive. Just miles away, in an unmarked field behind a small-town cemetery, the bodies of the unnamed lie buried behind NO TRESPASSING signs. Here, grief meets witness.
The liberation of reading
A library is blossoming in the Colorado Desert, bridging Spanish and English, children and parents, imagination and possibility. Thanks to generous donations, says missioner Rick Dixon, families in Mexicali, Mexico are gathering to read, learn, and dream together—finding in books a path to peace, justice, and a brighter future.
God is the outcast
While missioner Rick Dixon in Mexicali, Mexico considered how the U.S. presidential election will affect asylum seekers, he was drawn to meditate on the words of German Lutheran pastor and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “God is the beyond in the midst of our lives.”
Blooming mind, peaceful heart
Through a student struggling with letters, missioner Rick Dixon in Mexico sees how important nature—and moving our bodies in it—is to heal and learn.
Of God and ladybugs
Talking to Mexicali’s 7-year-old ‘ladybug boss’ on a recent search-and-rescue mission
‘I have finished the race …’
Remembering a brother and friend, who ‘never lost his stride.’
Stones that talk
Ohio Maryknoll Affiliates encounter the children of Oasis del Niño in Mexicali.
Joy on the border
Despite being displaced by a cartel’s threat of violence, Gilberto is a living testament to resilience and joy.
