Jesse Esqueda, OMI: A Talent and Passion for Service
PARTNER PROFILE
In the largest and most poverty-stricken diocese in Tijuana, Mexico, just south of the border from California, Jesse Esqueda, OMI, went to work two years ago at his first mission as an Oblate priest.
This year, with the San Eugenio Parish mission right-sized and turned over to the Archdiocese, Fr. Esqueda and the mission will move to where the need is even greater – the poorest and least developed part of the parish to the east.
Born in Mexico, and raised in Southern California, Fr. Esqueda grew up “a curious child,” he said, raised in a home filled with music and faith.
“My father was a very talented violinist and worked full time as a musician,” he said. “From my father, I learned the value of hard work, honesty and commitment.”
Fr. Jesse Esqueda, OMI
From his mother, Fr. Esqueda learned faith, generosity and service. “She was always around guiding our spiritual life,” he said. “We grew up praying the rosary together every evening and attending mass every Sunday. My mother was a very strong and generous woman. She was a catechist, parish leader and missionary.”
His father passed away in 1993 and his mother lost a battle with cancer last September.
As an outgoing child, Fr. Esqueda had been so involved in his parish growing up that when he graduated from high school, he joined a SEARCH retreat ministry in Los Angeles.
“It was during this time that I discovered my talents and passion for service,” he said. So he followed a call to become a long-term missionary experience in Honduras, Central America.
There, he worked in the Diocese of San Pedro Sula as a youth advisor and elementary school teacher, also volunteering in an orphanage of children living with HIV/AIDS while pursuing a theology degree from the Catholic University in Honduras.
“The experience of sharing my life with the poor, the sick and the suffering changed my life forever,” he said. After two years, Fr. Esqueda returned to California to work as a youth minister in the Oblate parish of Santa Rosa Church. “The Oblate spirit, compassion, and zeal for the mission encouraged me to continue with my discernment process.”
He entered the pre-novitiate program in Buffalo, NY, in 2007, then continued his formation at the Oblate Novitiate In Godfrey, Illinois, before professing fist vows as an Oblate of Mary Immaculate. In 2014, Fr. Esqueda earned a master’s degree in divinity from the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio and was ordained a priest. He set out for his first mission in Tijuana.
“There are about 200,000 people living within our parish boundaries,” he said of San Eugenio, which was established in 1996. “We have 14 mission churches in 14 different communities. Each mission church functions as a small parish. Each mission church has many ministries including a religious education program and a youth group.”
Three priests and one Oblate brother currently work at the mission. They will soon be moving the mission closer to Union Antorchista and Fuentes, where new migrants tend to build along railroad tracks, squatting on federal land, in neighborhoods lacking basic infrastructure such as paved roads, potable water, sanitation and electricity.
Learn more about the mission and the people of San Eugenio here.
“We seek out and immerse ourselves in the lives of the most abandoned in their many faces and voices, and struggle with those most affected by conflicts.” – OMI Vision Statement
Fr. Esqueda with the youth ministry program. There are over 300 active youth from Tijuana in the program.
June brings good news for mission’s Special Children in Tijuana: A new bus
- At July 17, 2012
- By getchart
- In Mission Stories, News, Our Mission Work, Tijuana
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The month of June brought good news for the Special Children of Tijuana. In 2009, the San Eugenio Mission started a “Giving Hope to Special Kids” Program to provide services to children with special needs (i.e. autism, attention deficit disorders, Williams Syndrome, sight and hearing deficiencies, and others) that are left behind by the local public school system.
In June, the program received much needed help, a new bus to provide transportation to the center for these special children, and their families. The new bus purchase was only possible thanks to grants from an U.S. foundation and the Mexican government.
Staffed by a team that includes a psychologist, a social worker, a special education teacher, a language therapist, and a coordinator, the program gives these children a chance to be diagnosed and treated, as well as to learn.
Special Kids celebrating
More that 140 young people have already been receiving these services for some time, but many more in some of the most remote areas of the mission were limited in their ability to travel to the community center where the services take place.
To reach out to these latter children and their families, who do not have the ability to travel to the community center, and transport these children to the center and back everyday, last June the San Eugenio Mission was able to purchased a new bus.
The purchase was made possible by a grant from an American private foundation and one from the Mexican government.
La Morita Mission, So close. Yet… So Far!
- At March 01, 2012
- By Oblate Partnership
- In Mission Stories, News, Tijuana
- 0
By Patricio Espinoza, OblateMissions.org
Oblate Partners visit La Morita Mission
La Morita is a community south of the California, Mexico border. Here Oblate Missionaries serve more than 250,000 people.
In 2010 Partners visited La Morita Mission, as part of a field trip to the site during the Missionary Oblate Partnership Meeting and Retreat in San Diego California.
La Morita is only minutes south of the Tijuana-San Diego border. Four Oblates and one brother manage Casa San Eugenio, several chapels , a clinic, a community center and more. The streets are only dirt roads that turn into thick layers of mud during the rainy winter months.
And life? Life is not easy here, most families survive doing odd jobs, many are elderly, and the young are unemployed. Often a family’s weekly income barely covers their basic needs like groceries.
Oblate Missionaries in La Morita bring as much comfort as their resources and donations allow. Their medical center helps children and the elderly, there is also help and education for children with special needs, and on a weekly basis many of the families receive their “despensa”, a groceries bag with basic foods including milk, rice, beans, oil.
La Morita, Tijuana, Mexico
- At May 24, 2011
- By Admin
- In Tijuana
- 0
La Morita
Since 1996 the Oblates of the San Eugenio de Mazenod Mission have been ministering to thousands of the more than 300,000 men, women and children who live in the Colonia La Morita and surrounding areas, on the outer edge of the city of Tijuana.
These persons come from all over Mexico expecting to find plentiful jobs and a better standard of living. Many end up in jobs at the maquiladoras (assembly plants) or remain unemployed because the opportunities for work are limited and the conditions of the work frequently not favorable. They struggle to meet their most immediate needs, frequently falling behind and not having access to even basic services.
San Eugenio Clinic and Community Center
The Oblate Mission provides them with some of those services. A complex known as Casa San Eugenio houses the medical and dental clinic on the ground floor level and educational programs in the basement. Besides the medical and dental services, the clinic also offers psychological and psychiatric services.
The Community Center, in the lower level of the building, offers programs for children with special needs, various education and training programs (i.e., tutoring, primary and secondary level education for adults, GED programs, manual arts, English and computer skills), and a microcredit project for local women.
As importantly, San Eugenio Mission gives these people hope, offering them the Good News of Jesus Christ …
in the form of evangelization programs, retreats, sacraments, catechesis and other religious activities.
A special program: Giving Hope to Special Kids
This program came into existence in 2009, to provide a space for children that have certain disabilities given that:
- the majority of them are not accepted by regular institutions,
- their parents cannot afford to take the children to specialized schools because; (a) those schools are far away and taking the children to them cost money, food, and time and (b) the high demand for a place in those schools results in long waiting lists, many time more than one year of wait.
The Program intends to:
- meet the education needs of these children and youth and providing them with a better quality of life, as well as a space for their integral development, and
- provide a service to the community and the extended area.
The programs offered are:
- school education at the pre-school and first grade level, two different groups,
- psychological therapies, and
- occupational therapies: “Seeds of God Garden.”
Children Day in Mexico, partners also celebrate
During the current school year, close to 30 children receive school education. This number will increase in the coming years thanks to the construction of a larger building and the purchase of a minibus that will transport children from the outskirts to the mission to and from the school
Currently, San Eugenio Mission is raising a new building to house the program for Children with Special Needs. The Missionary Oblate Partnership has supported this program from the beginning, with the launching of the program itself, as well as the new building and the funding to purchase the minibus. The Partnership works very closely with the San Eugenio Mission, providing funding-related advice and support for all its programs and projects.
