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Kissing Icons: How the Orthodox Faith Through Ministry Shapes Needy Lives in Mexico | TIO016 CWP104
Two dedicated young women, both named Julia, share their transformative journeys serving at St. Innocence Orphanage and Casa Cuna San Felipe in Tijuana, Mexico (https://www.projectmexico.org/casa-cuna-infant-orphanage). Working within the Project Mexico organization, they provide loving Orthodox Christian homes to boys ages 5-18 and babies from just days old to age 4 – all coming from situations marked by poverty, family instability, and often severe trauma.
• All children come through DEAF (Mexico's equivalent of Child Protective Services) from situations involving poverty, drug issues, violence, or family instability
• Orthodox faith infuses daily life with staff wearing crosses and prayer ropes, children kissing icons, and older boys finding purpose serving in the altar
• Working with traumatized children requires creative approaches to discipline and understanding their unique backgrounds and triggers
• Both Julias discovered their calling to serve in Mexico unexpectedly through short-term mission trips that transformed into long-term commitments
• The orphanage's greatest needs include volunteers willing to commit 5-6 months, diapers and baby supplies, and consistent recurring donations
What began as one-week volunteer trips for both women evolved into life-altering commitments as they fell in love with the children and mission. Their stories reveal both heartwarming moments – babies enthusiastically kissing icons, older boys finding purpose serving in the altar – and heartbreaking challenges, including caring for medically fragile newborns and helping severely neglected children learn basic communication skills.
The orphanage environment offers these vulnerable children something powerful beyond physical care: living examples of faith in action. Staff members, whether American Orthodox volunteers or local Mexican employees, create an atmosphere where spiritual practices are naturally integrated into daily life. Children who arrive with no religious background quickly become curious about baptism, wearing crosses, and other expressions of Orthodox tradition, finding stability in these rituals and relationships.
From its humble beginnings in converted horse stables in the 1990s to today's multifaceted mission, Project Mexico demonstrates what's possible when faith motivates service. As the women explain, even small, consistent contributions – monthly diaper donations, regular prayers, or sharing their story – help sustain this vital work year-round, not just during popular summer mission trips.
Looking to make a meaningful difference in children's lives? Consider making missions part of your yearly rhythm – whether through volunteering, donating supplies to their Amazon wishlist, or committing to regular financial support. Most importantly, remember these children and caregivers in your prayers, asking Saint Innocent, Saint Philip and Guardian Angels to watch over this sacred work at the borderlands.
Please remember to pray for us. Pray to Saint Innocent, Saint Philip and Guardian Angels.
Visit our friends at: https://www.projectmexico.org/
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We, because we most, if not all of the staff is Orthodox, and then we have a lot of local Mexican staff as well who work especially with our older boys and one of the requirements that they need to have a faith. So all the time you'll be asking someone how they are and they'll be like I'm great, thank God. Like all around the orphanage. So our kids have great living examples of what it means to be enacting your faith and at the very least they always see people crossing themselves and wearing a cross or wearing a prayer rope. And you, we do see that rub off on the kids, even the older ones. You know, I think a lot of our older kids kind of find a purpose in serving in the altar and they like being in charge of something and feeling that sense of responsibility. Or you'll see the younger kids like coloring on the on the ground, but you know they're singing the hymns along with the choir and with our babies. They love kissing the icons. They're obsessed. They just go like and like we take them over to kiss the icon and it's really cool to watch especially when there's a new kid watching them kind of realize you know what the system is and all of a sudden they're like curious about baptism or, um, you know, wearing a cross to school or putting a little keychain on their backpack, because they see everybody else doing it, and it's a really positive way to reinforce that Christian environment. And you know, this is what we do here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, I'm Julia Parsenios. I'm originally from the Boston area and right now I'm working and living in Tijuana at St Innocence Orphanage and Project Mexico down there. I've been there for about a year now and I'm coming up towards the end of my commitment. But I originally got involved through the home building program and that's the Project Mexico side of things and I did the summer internship there after a wonderful volunteer experience and I fell in love with the children and that led me to where I am today.
Speaker 2:My name is Julia Kasten. I'm from Boulder, colorado, originally, and I moved down doing the same home building program as Julia in the same summer, so summer of 2023. I've been down there ever since working as the administrative assistant for the director of 2023. I've been down there ever since working as the administrative assistant for the director of operations. So the Project Mexico organization includes St Innocence Orphanage and the Casa Cuna, which is Casa Cuna San Felipe. So that's the baby orphanage. So it's three programs in one.
Speaker 2:As far as advertising goes, we kind of go by Project Mexico all as one, but the home building operation happens throughout the summer. It's eight weeks or 12 weeks actually, with eight weeks of building. The orphanage St Innocence is for the boys ages five to 18. And the baby orphanage, the Casa Cuna, is ages zero to four. So they all fall under the same umbrella. They all happen under the same property in Mexico and the same people work on the property. But those are the three different sections. And then I came to know Project Mexico when I was 14 years old. I went down with my church to build in Mexico for a week and I fell in love with it. I went down again when I was 16. And then again at 19 to build for the summer, so you can go for a week a summer or stay down for longer.
Speaker 1:Oh, I think everybody should try it. We have a lot of churches see it as more of primarily a Goya thing or a Soyo thing for young adults. But we have had people come with children as young as two and, granted, they don't really participate in the home building part, but they love it All the way up until late 70s, early 80s part, but they love it all the way up until late 70s, early 80s, like it's anyone who can come who has a heart for missions and a heart just for helping people, and it's a way to step outside of your own little world sometimes and really see, yeah, the world around you and give back to communities in need, so really just anyone who's feeling a call, or even if you're not feeling a call. It's been really interesting also to see how, as this mission of orthodoxy has been growing throughout the years, as even just the people from the summer come down for the summers, we've seen our parish grow, the local parish grow a lot. So, even if it's we're just baptizing all of the boys that come in and then, like every few months, there'll be like a new family, a new local family, or some boys who have left the program and have gotten married and have their own kids, like one family in particular has been coming back recently with his kids. So it's really beautiful to watch it spread along the community and people. It's refreshing to see a world where you know there's not a church 20 minutes away from everybody. So people have been traveling far for our sweet little parish. So people have been traveling far for our sweet little parish, which is wonderful.
Speaker 1:So our founder, greg Yova, our founder Greg Yova, started St Innocent Orphanage in the 90s, I believe 1996, and there was kind of a whole series of trying to move the orphanage along and thena bunch of things would happen that resulted in major setbacks. And so there were a few instances where they tried to get it started and I believe that someone brought down a relic of St Innocent and immediately like a big donation was made and they were able to kickstart the organization that way. That sounds right, okay, and so that's why we are so closely entangled with St Innocent and he's been a very important patron saint for our boys. But more about the orphanage in general. So we provide a loving, caring, spiritually nourishing home to. Right now it's about 23 boys and the number kind of fluctuates throughout the year depending on who's you know. People are going in and out and they actually right now live in old horse stables. So if you go through the entrance, for those of you that have been there, they've been totally refurbished and it doesn't look like horse stables anymore, but it kind of resembles it a little bit. So that's a fun little fact.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all our kids also. To give more detail, they come from the. It's called DEAF and it is the Development and Integration of Familial Life. Um, so they are all. All of our older boys are wards of the state and so this is where we get them from, is kind of this whole holding facility. So DEAF will pick them up from these situations that they come from and then we can kind of um vet them and see if they'd be a good fit for our orphanage. Um, but they all live very normal lives. We send them all to schools in the area and as they get older, through the program we're able to pick and choose which schools they want to go to that are best suited for their needs and their interests.
Speaker 2:So a lot of the poverty that we see and the struggle that we see, not only in Mexico but everywhere our focus is Mexico is unstable homes. That can come from drug issues, um, movement because of violence. So people coming from the South to the North, um, this can be from absent fathers and too many kids and not enough resources, or a lot of children with not enough resources in the home, um, so these kids, if they're not taken care of, there's abuse or any other issues in the home, they'll be taken out and put into DEAF. Deaf is the governmental organization that's the American equivalent of CPS. From DEAF the children get processed.
Speaker 2:This can be from. They can be in DEAF from two days to 10 years, depending on their situation and what orphanages can take them, to 10 years, depending on their situation and what orphanages can take them. So St Innocent's Orphanage and the Casa Cuna they are, or we are, one of the many orphanages in the state of Baja California in Mexico. So we are privately funded, we're privately managed, which makes our situation a lot easier to take care of the kids with high standards. They will come to us or another orphanage and then, once they age out at 18, then we give them resources to move on with life, continue to go to educational facilities or higher education, or just go find jobs and work and live as they normally would.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then, along with St Innocent Orphanage for our older boys, we also have the Casa Cuna, san Felipe, which was just started in October 2023. And it is meant to be a temporary loving home for orphaned babies. So we take kids anywhere from ages well, two days old to five years old is the cutoff, and they will stay with us as long as they need. And they also We've had kids who come from other countries and are just traveling through Mexico and then somehow get separated from their parents and end up with us.
Speaker 2:So we do see a lot of difficult cases. There's so much joy working with the babies. They're full of laughter and hugs to give, and then, on the flip side, you know that you're dealing with very serious issues in children without families or homes. You're dealing with very serious issues in children without families or homes, so you quickly try and get them introduced to loving arms if they're just an infant, a routine, keep them warm, give them that sense of security right away, to try and correct what's happened in their lives.
Speaker 2:We had this one baby and she was very, very small. She arrived in her first week of life. I don't remember exactly what day she arrived when in her first week of life. I don't remember exactly what day it was, but her first week of life and she was incredibly tiny, um, and she had to go to the hospital because she was she premature, I believe. She was premature um, and she had respiratory issues kind kind of a list of issues and we were trading off shifts at the hospital and we ended up needing to sign her back to DEEF, to give her back to DEEF because she would have needed to have treatment in the hospital for the next year. So, thinking through what our needs are at the Casa Cuna how to take care of the kids we already had while also caring for this new baby we just got. It was the best decision to have somebody come and stay with her at the hospital for the next year.
Speaker 2:It was a really difficult one because it's where you have to make difficult choices on how to manage that life and care for that life. So we did our best in that situation and then had to make a tough call when there was no easy call, there was no easy decision. Um. So you just do what you can for the kids that you already have, the new kids that you might get babies, that you might get um. But we got really attached to her quickly and then had to say goodbye pretty quickly and you don't really hear from the, you don't hear from DEEP. After that, you don't know where that baby is after you say goodbye. So it's a little unknown that you have to deal with and you just pray. You just pray, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's really fascinating to kind of see the difference between really little kids since we take infants versus the older kids that we have. So we had just had a little girl who was four and she arrived like two days before Christmas last year, very, very soon before Christmas, and she was three at the time and we were kind of learning about her and she had very clearly had a lot of issues with neglect, so she couldn't speak at all. When she came she said see, and that's, that's it. See, she would give a little thumbs up and go see, but she turned four with us and that's when we kind of realized the gravity of her issues.
Speaker 1:But with the older kids, with our, with our little kids, we try to teach them consequences for their actions. If they do something they shouldn't be doing, we'll throw them in their crib for like five minutes and be like you have a consequencia. You were in your crib With her because she didn't have a crib. We couldn't do that, and so at first we started, you know, leaving her in her bedroom and she would just have these full, full blown breakdowns because we had kind of deducted that she had been left alone for hours and hours and so we had to work around that and see what's a suitable consequence for this girl, for, you know, hitting a baby, but how do we ensure that we're not, you know, triggering anything there?
Speaker 1:And with her also, she would kind of become very blank behind the eye sometimes when she did something bad. So she would just like leave her kind of like leave her body for a second and just stare at you blankly and you could see. You know the gaps in her education and her development from her upbringing before she came to us. But she was actually just adopted a few days ago, thank God. But with that too, with working with DEAF, it's very interesting as a caretaker there because you develop, you know. She was with us for three months. We developed these relationships with these kids and we got notice that she was adopted 10 minutes before she left. So it was, it can be very instant, yeah.
Speaker 2:I could not have imagined myself really coming back to Project Mexico in a long term way at all. I could always at 16, 15, 14. I always wanted to come back, but it was that one week trip. That's all it's ever going to be. Um, so coming back at 19 for the home building summer, it changed my life. I was at a spot. Where was I 20?
Speaker 1:Yeah 20 and turns 21.
Speaker 2:But coming back at 20, I was at a moment in life where I just needed a community and I needed an opportunity to serve. So I had this inkling and I think many people do. They have this inkling where you want to give to other people, you want to give time, resources, whatever you have to other people, but they just don't know where to look. And so it gets bogged down by okay, now I have to go to work or now I have to go to school, and you get distracted. But I had found this avenue.
Speaker 2:My sister shoved me in the position. She said sign this application, you have to go to Project Mexico for the summer. So that was amazing. And then I just stayed down because the opportunity threw itself in my face again and I had the availability. So the Casa Cuna was an idea and they said we need people. So I, yes, give me the application, and it just kind of fell into place too easily to work out. But I think that people, most people, have the inkling to want to do this or something like this. They just don't know where to look. And so I've been given the blessing of having it shoved in my face and the blessing of getting attached to these kids really really quickly um, I also could never, never, imagine myself, um, being a part of Project Mexico, let alone living down there full-time.
Speaker 1:I had no idea it existed until I was 20 and I went down. I was doing a semester of faith at Hellenic College, holy Cross, and they one of the girls hey, we're organizing a group. If you're free for spring break and want to come down, I was like sure, and they had a scholarship all planned out with OCMC, the Orthodox Christian Mission Center, and so I went down for basically for free, which was wonderful, which is not how the summer program is. So it was a really big blessing and I fell in love with it. I, the application was due in December for the internship and I got down there in March and the person in charge of the home building program let me submit a late application for the summer internship. And then, thank God, I was there for the summer and that's where we met and I was still. I loved it so much but still wasn't like I'm going to live here. It was just like. This is amazing. I'll go back to school in the fall and, as it was, it became, you know, application season. I was thinking about maybe graduate schools or getting a job.
Speaker 1:The Casa Cuna opened that fall and she had just moved down there and I called Presbyterian Mary Lynn, who's in charge of kind of recruiting people to go down there, and we talked for a really long time and I realized this is what I wanted to do and I prayed for like four months before I made my commitment and I made my commitment in January and then I moved down right after I graduated.
Speaker 1:I missed my graduation for it and I just like completely fell in love head over heels for it. And it was like when we were interns for the home building program, we hung out with the boys at the orphanage all the time. We really loved being around them, but I knew that that was something kind of out of my realm of experience was like working with traumatized older kids, um, and so having the Casa Cuna, it was a really. It's a really wonderful way to serve in the in the same community and be a part of that community and still hang out with the boys while cultivating these beautiful lives of these babies and helping them in such a formative time of their life.
Speaker 2:So the ranch runs with a priest living down there full time, father Demetrius Swanson. He is the priest on site. So you already have the presence of a very, very wise and lovely priest and his family down there. But as far as individually, you have church. That's a two minute walk away and there are icons everywhere and you're living with people who are all down there because they found out about it from probably an Orthodox resource Also are Orthodox themselves. So you're already surrounded in a very unique community of younger people searching for their growth in the faith, searching to share it with other people and also looking to live their lives completely immersed in not only another culture but another faith or our faith. So it's something that you probably couldn't find many other places.
Speaker 2:It feels very safe, a haven that's what people say when they come down for the summers. It feels like just a peaceful place, even though our days are crazy. It feels peaceful and you know that there's a wise word to be had and shared around every corner. And if you're struggling with something, then a big piece of advice. We pray about it, or have you talked to a priest? Or this advice in your life just flows off of faith, because everybody approaches an issue with the same kind of checklist. Have you prayed about it? Have you consulted somebody wise about it? Have you prayed for that person? If it's a conflict, it's really beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll just speak for the children too.
Speaker 1:We, because we most, if not all of the staff, is Orthodox, and then we have a lot of local Mexican staff as well who work especially with our older boys and one of the requirements that they need to have a faith, um, so you'll all the time you'll be asking someone how they are and they'll be like I'm great, thank god, like all around the orphanage, um, so our kids have great living examples of what it means to be enacting your faith, um, and at the very least, like they'll, they always see people crossing themselves and wearing a cross or wearing a prayer rope and we do see that rub off on the kids, even the older ones.
Speaker 1:You know, I think a lot of our older kids kind of find a purpose in serving in the altar and they like being in charge of something and feeling that sense of responsibility. Or you'll see the younger kids like coloring on the ground, but you know they're singing the hymns along with the choir and with our babies. They love kissing the icons. They're obsessed. They just go like and we take them over to kiss the icon and it's really cool to watch especially when there's a new kid watching them kind of realize what the system is and all of a sudden they're curious about baptism or wearing a cross to school or putting a little keychain on their backpack, because they see everybody else doing it, and it's a really positive way to reinforce that Christian environment and this is what we do here.
Speaker 2:One more thing, just with boys specifically. I think there's you mentioned boys serving in the altar. There is a lot of value in the boys, seeing that there's a hierarchy, and I think it's the same for everybody. There's a natural hierarchy to life. But we were chatting a little bit the other day and one of the older boys who's graduated out of the program mentioned how it was really helpful to see that there's a hierarchy to life. There's the priest and then there's the director of the orphanage who's also a priest, and you get your guidance from somebody who's who has a title. That means something, but also the life experience to back it up and the spiritual education to back it up. So it's a really healthy way to approach life is through a faith, a faith organization when I hear the words what are your needs?
Speaker 1:my, my first thing is always diapers. We always always need diapers and because of that we have such an influx so it always feels like we have so many but we go through them so quickly. So diapers are definitely our biggest needs Diaper, cream stuff like that, like anything you can think of that you use every day for your kids. And then, when it comes to people at home getting involved, we try not to have people come and go really frequently for our kids because they don't have the same two parents. They have 10 caretakers. So we try to have them, you know, establish connections with the people they do have. But if you are finding yourself feeling the calls to serve the Casa Cuna, you can get involved through volunteering for a few months, or I think our minimum requirement is like five to six months, and then a year or two years and normally people end up staying for longer because they love it so much. So those are our biggest needs right now our hands and diapers. I would say yeah, and we're also working on getting a Casa Cuna car. So if you head to our projectmexicoorg website, there's well, all of our needs are actually listed there under the Casa Cuna subpage. But you're able to go to all of these different links for vehicle donation, for buying stuff for our Amazon wishlist. So those are all places where you can really quickly find a very specific list of what we will need at the Casa Cuna.
Speaker 1:Padre Nicholas or Father Nicholas Andrew Chow. He always gives this speech at the end of the summer work trips and he'll say you guys were down here for a week and we thank you so much for your service, but we will still be here the rest of the year. We'll be here in January, we'll be here in April, we'll be here for everything. So, with that being said, please don't forget about us. It's easy to do a one-time donation or get involved with school buddies once and kind of let it trail off and that happens. Life happens. I do that too. But I think something that is more reliable for us is a smaller recurring donation is really good. Or getting involved a few times. You know, having a specific formula on the Amazon wish list that's like a subscription and saying, yeah, I'll buy two cases of this formula every month and I'll send it down. So something like that, where getting involved, maybe even in a smaller way, but for the next few years is something that we really appreciate yeah.
Speaker 2:I think, make a mission part of your year, whether it's for your parish or for just your personal life. Make um a donation or going on one trip, or, you know, part of your mind, part of your prayer mission focused Um, whether it's Mexico, whether it's in Fiji, or whether it's in your own community. People have, there's so much need everywhere, so just go go outside and look and you'll find the need. So, and then give effort where you can.
Speaker 1:And please remember to pray for us. Pray to Saint Innocent, saint Philip and Guardian Angels.