“More Alive Than When I Left”
When Christopher Clark walked through the gates of Fundación Santa María del Fiat in Olón, Ecuador, this May, he was returning to a place he already knew and loved.
The children remembered him, too.
“They just ran up and started saying my name,” said Clark, a psychology and theology double major entering his junior year. Some of the children greeting him had not even been at the foundation during his first Franciscan mission there. They had heard about the missionaries, seen photos, and learned their names from the other children.
“That was just really beautiful,” Clark said. “We affected them so much that they wanted to share it with people who didn’t even know us.”
Clark was one of 20 Franciscan University students who spent nearly three weeks this summer serving at the foundation and the Santa María del Fiat School. Accompanied by advisors and Franciscan TOR friars, the missionaries assisted with English classes each morning. Afternoons were devoted to the children at the foundation—helping with homework, playing sports and music, and, most importantly, being present.
“It’s mainly a relational ministry,” Clark said. “What we’re there to do is love them and show them the love of Christ.”
That ministry begins long before the team reaches Ecuador.
Anabel Stickney ’26, who served as lead alongside Clark, spent the academic year helping form the team. The missionaries met twice a week for spiritual formation, Spanish prayer, and team building. They attended Spanish Masses on campus and prayed for the children they would later meet. That preparation, Stickney said, allowed the team to arrive ready to serve.
As a lead, her mission also meant caring for the missionaries themselves. When team members became sick, she brought meals, checked on them, and did whatever was needed to keep the mission moving.
“My perspective of everything shifted from being a team member last year to having this team lead mindset this year,” she said. “My job was to serve the children while also being committed to making sure this mission goes as smoothly as possible. It was about loving as many people as possible.”
For Stickney, who graduated just days before departing for Ecuador, the trip became a fitting conclusion to four years at Franciscan. An English major now beginning a teaching career, she saw her gifts for education and relational ministry come together while helping Ecuadorian students practice English.
“This was the perfect place for me to end my time at Franciscan,” she says.
Junior social work major Suzanne Judge holds a child on her shoulders during the University’s summer mission trip to Olón, Ecuador.
For Molly Cooley, the trip marked a beginning. The theology major from Annapolis, Maryland, had just completed her freshman year and had never been on a mission trip. In fact, she stumbled into the Mission Fair during her first weeks on campus and initially applied for the Ecuador trip while mistakenly thinking she was applying for Honduras.
“It’s as if God said to me that I was going to Ecuador even though I initially didn’t want to go to Ecuador,” Cooley said. “In retrospect, it’s obvious to me that I was meant for this mission and to bring the love of Jesus to these children.”
Cooley found herself sitting at Mass in Ecuador with one of the young girls from the foundation nestled against her. She was struck by how deeply the children desired the simple affection and presence the missionaries could offer.
Throughout the trip, another thought kept returning to her: “I can’t live the same way.”
She said the mission gave her an unfamiliar freedom to be completely present to the people in front of her and helped deepen her understanding of God’s love. Now, Cooley has been selected to help lead next year’s Ecuador mission.
“I think people should go on mission at Franciscan because it will change your life,” she said. “It helps you look outside yourself.”
Each year, Franciscan University’s Missionary Outreach Program sends more than 300 students on over a dozen domestic and international missions. For Clark, the reason to go is ultimately simple.
“You go down there to serve other people, but you often receive more than you gave,” he said. “I come back feeling more alive than I did when I left.”
For more information on Missions of Peace,
visit franciscan.edu/outreach/missions-of-peace.
Enroute
