A Mission of Faith and Presence

This past winter, Xaverian campus ministers Ms. Brianna Larnard and Mr. Peter Welch, along with seven Xaverian students, gathered at Boston Logan International Airport to begin a week-long immersive faith and service retreat in Peru. 

This new service opportunity was the brainchild of Ms. Larnard, who had previously lived in Peru as a foreign missionary. “I always knew that I would go back one day,” she says. “I wanted to be able to bring students with me, to share what I learned and provide them with a different cultural and faith experience.” 

Three flights and one hour-long ride in the back of a pick-up truck later, the group arrived at their home for the next week: the Pastoral Center in Picota. After settling in and eating a quick meal, they ventured into town, getting their first glimpse of the areas in which they would be serving. On the second day, they were joined by a youth group from Saint Mary of the Nativity in Scituate, essentially doubling the size of their cohort. 

Throughout the week, the students worked in two different service groups, a manual labor group and a ministry of presence group, as a way of experiencing every aspect of service. The manual labor group was tasked with cementing floors in a home that had recently been damaged due to flooding, while the ministry of presence group connected with the people of the towns they visited, offering to pray with those who were sick or unable to attend mass. 

The masses themselves were a new experience for most of the group. Father Nicolas, a local priest assigned to serve their specific area (as well as 115 other towns within the diocese), presided over the mass in Spanish. The language difference, however, did not prevent students from connecting with the congregation. “Our students had guidebooks as a way to follow along with the mass,” says Ms. Larnard, “and Father Matthew of Situate was also there to say a few parts of the mass in English.”

She explains that many of the people in the towns they were visiting don’t have regular access to the sacraments or to mass in the same way that our community does. “They sometimes go for months without having these spiritual opportunities,” she says. “It was cool to give our students a real-time lesson on how fortunate they are and it made participating in these offerings much more special.” 

While students say the manual labor work was gratifying, the highlight for most was the time they spent in communion with residents. “We would go out and visit with the sick and the elderly in these communities,” says Thomas Nee ’25. “People would welcome us into their homes and tell us stories. Being able to interact and pray with them was my favorite part.”

On some days, thanks to Ms. Larnard’s Peruvian connections, the group would be given a heads-up as to who in town was in need of prayers or extra support. On others, it was their responsibility to guide themselves. “In Caspisapa, we were told that there weren’t many sick people for us to pray with, and because I didn’t know that much about the town, I encouraged the students to treasure hunt,” she says. “Treasure hunting,” she explains, begins with praying that the Holy Spirit sends each person something small—such as a name or a color, anything that may come to mind—of which to take note. Then, it’s time to explore. Sometimes it’s simple. For example, a person suddenly thinks of sunflowers, and on their journey, they come across a house with sunflowers in the front yard, indicating that this is a family with whom you should interact. Sometimes it requires a little more legwork. 

As the cohort broke up into smaller groups to start treasure hunting, Ms. Larnard gave the students a heads-up that they might need to ask people questions to get the ball rolling. Things highlighted in her group specifically were pink flowers, oranges, denim, the name Maria, and the word maternity.

Ryan O’Sullivan ’26, who had been appointed as her group leader, asked a woman they encountered in town if she knew anyone named Maria, and was surprised to learn that a woman with that name lived in the house next door to where they were. 

“We walked over to the house and asked for Maria,” Ms. Larnard recalls. “She was this young woman with a little kid, and she had pants with pink flowers on them. We asked if there was anyone sick in her home that we could pray with, and she told us that her mother had diabetes. Maria’s mother walked into the room to greet us, and she was wearing all denim,” she says. “Almost everything that our group set out to ‘look for’ was with us in that house. We felt that the Holy Spirit was truly at work, and we were meant to encounter these people because of all the random little things we found. I think being able to pray with people in that way was really meaningful to a lot of our young men.”

Each night, after saying goodnight to the youth group from St. Mary’s, the students would gather together to reflect on their “Glory stories,” a practice where each person would share when during their day they had seen Christ in the people they encountered, or in their surroundings. “A lot of the times we were reflecting on how we saw Christ in each other,” Thomas says. “You’re not necessarily paying attention to the things you were doing throughout the day, but someone else might have been, and they would share what they noticed during their reflection.”

According to Ms. Larnard, watching students’ transformation throughout the week was very powerful. “This trip absolutely opened their eyes to Christ, and to the ways that God moves,” she says. “Witnessing the little things—such as the way the language of their prayers became more insightful as the trip went on—was very telling to me that this was a blessed experience for everyone.” Thomas agrees, having boarded the plane home with an increased appreciation for his faith: “A huge thing I learned about myself during this trip was how lucky I am to be part of the universal family of the Church, which brings together all languages and cultures.”