In 2020, I spent nearly the entire year playing video games indoors, and occasionally half-heartedly doing schoolwork. I’d spend my day not really thinking much of anything, just attending the Zoom meetings that I had to, and hanging out with…
Most days on our BWAP trip began with a devotional from the gospel of Mark, shared with members of Frontera de Cristo and our delegation from Pres House, and this particular day was no different. Our devotional came from Mark…
I. i wish i counted the steps from water to wall. or the traces of travelers i held in my hands (bottles, cans, all drifting in sand). but the numbers i could reach seemed stunted against the miles upon miles…
The night we arrived in Douglas we were taken to the US side of the border. Immediately we were met with a tall metal wall with four spiraled lines of razor wire across the upper half. Behind us was a…
Over the course of the trip, we had heavily interacted with one fact: many migrants die crossing the Sonoran Desert. This fact was unavoidable. The border wall, designed specifically to harm and kill migrants trying to cross, is one of…
You know what’s challenging? Loving others. It’s really hard. Why? Well for me, loving others means caring for them—offering aid, whether that be food, water, weather-appropriate clothes, a resting place, medicine, somewhere to freshen up, or money. Offering aid is…
As the van bumped through the desert, I began to wonder: Is this hike going to be more difficult than I anticipated? The van came to a halt, and it was time to begin our journey. I started towards the…
When I left for this trip, I had one definition of borders, shaped by years of living in a country that has been slowly building ours with fear and hatred: uninviting, hostile, shut off. When we first drove up to…
The Sonoran Desert is composed (at least to my eyes) of predominantly three things: rocks, sand, and cactuses. It was not a landscape which I initially expected to find beautiful. But it grew on me. Dotted with mountains, some of…
A few years ago now, I saw a clip of Shia Labeouf reflecting on what was most meaningful for him while recovering in a rehabilitation facility. He described what it felt like and what it meant to have someone show…