Being ‘interrupted’ by a guest is being invited by God.
-Jesús Tellez, volunteer 

 

Many volunteers have encountered within Annunciation House an entirely new experience of Church. The first time Susanna Parrish attended Mass in the house’s chapel, she noted the absence of pews, stained glass windows, and sacramental garments. She couldn’t tell which person was the priest until the service began. Sitting on a cushion on the floor, Susanna could not understand the Spanish around her, but she “sensed happiness and gratefulness, friendship and love, and most importantly, the presence of God.” (1)

Every morning the volunteers gathered for Reflection. This was a dedicated time to pray, share their thoughts, or simply sit in silence. The founders of Annunciation House were all Catholic, and frequently prayed from the liturgical Book of Hours. Later, as the spiritual beliefs of volunteers grew more diverse, so did the communal practice of Reflection: one day they might discuss a theologian or a news bulletin; another they might write in their journals or meditate. Traditional prayer remained important, but it was joined by other activities they found meaningful, other ways to process their experiences together. 

During busy times, volunteers might be tempted to skip Reflection in favor of more obviously productive tasks. But it was essential, the rechargeable battery that powered the house’s breakneck pace. Altaf Bhimji, a volunteer and devout Muslim, understood this well: he had worked in secular service agencies before, where the work sometimes felt transactional.

Altaf considered a communal cultivation of spirituality to be inseparable from the work of hospitality: each person who came to the door was to be received as a representative of God. 

Annunciation House didn’t call anyone to grand heroic deeds, but rather to myriad small daily sacrifices. Co-founder and director Ruben Garcia once likened it to the tender, thankless work of parenting small children: “Every day is a series of profound inconveniences that would be inconceivable to you not to do. That’s what we’re choosing. And people need to understand that this is the choice that they’re making. This is why it’s important to do the reflection…for that to make sense.” 

In Reflection, volunteers confronted—some for the first time—the powerful hidden frameworks that underpinned their lives: imperialist US policies, inequitable distribution of resources, structural racism, their own blind spots. What did it mean that they had chosen to live here as volunteers, while some of their housemates wanted nothing more than to move onward and earn an honest wage for their labor? How to reckon with the fact that most volunteers were white, middle-class Americans, whereas nearly all its guests were poor, undocumented people of color? How could the house avoid recreating the segregrated structures of the society that surrounded it? Tracing the thread of these conversations to his current work as a clinical social worker, Altaf mused: “The stuff that we’re beginning to talk about now in psychotherapy, about decolonization and anti-racism…it’s nothing that I feel many of the volunteers were not already doing.”

The house sparked questions for guests, too. Many didn’t really get why the volunteers did what they did. “I don’t understand white people,” one confessed. “If they have the chance to live normal lives with a wife and kids, buy a house, and work normal jobs…what’s the point?” Some assumed the volunteers must be paid, or receive some kind of school credit. One volunteer elaborated:

It doesn’t make sense to them. [We] have the ability to work. We have our citizenships. Why aren’t [we] out working? [I’m] a college graduate….[We] have the opportunity to get jobs and get paid, getting benefits. They would do it in a heartbeat….Why in the world would you live here unpaid, living in a house of a bunch of people…trying to get into the US? (3)

But even though some guests considered the volunteers a bunch of “crazy gringos,” many warmly embraced the community they found there—some simply for the duration of their stay, others through friendships that lasted much longer. Some former guests later become donors, or returned as volunteers. In a newsletter, volunteer Nicole Grimm reflected,“Life at Annunciation House makes obvious our relationship with other people. Our responsibility to each other as human beings is not diminished because we are strangers.” (4)

Through friction and growth, volunteers tried to accompany not only their guests but each other. It was not always easy. Of her first few months at Annunciation House Melissa Apprill wrote, “Never before in my life had I felt such loneliness.” She struggled with feelings of inadequacy, linking these to her poor Spanish. Genny O’Herron suffered a crisis of identity: “When I arrived here…I quickly sensed that I was in a supportive, accepting community and that I could be myself. But just as quickly, I realized that I didn’t even know who I was. It was a painful realization, and my first reaction was to put on one more mask, keep myself so busy that I didn’t have to think about it.” In time she realized, “you can’t hide from the people you live, work, play and pray with.” (5) The lack of privacy could be exhausting, but it also meant people got to know each other quickly. After her initial loneliness, Melissa “discovered the vast network of interdependence that exists among the volunteers.” She began to spend more time in the house’s common room, “and found that many faces were open to me. And I allowed myself to be open to them.” (6)

Volunteers came not only from the US but also Mexico, Nicaragua, Spain, England, Germany, Pakistan, and beyond. Some arrived as guests and later became volunteers, including one former Salvadoran guerilla fighter named Benito who stayed at the house for several years while pursuing a political asylum claim. He could not read or count, but he was a steady, skilled manager of people. “Volunteers come and go,” wrote Cheryl Marro in 1993, “but there is an independent community spirit that exists.” (7) Life at Annunciation House was itself a journey, often beginning in confusion and overwhelm. As volunteers gained experience, they took their turn teaching the others. That didn’t mean they ever had things completely figured out: “There are few answers here,” wrote Nicole Grimm. “But there is a sense that, through our working and living, we are becoming something more than that which we were.” 

This work of becoming was never finished. Decades after he helped found Annunciation House, the organization’s longtime director, Ruben Garcia, was asked whether he still felt continually transformed by his work with the migrant poor. “Absolutely,” he said:

I think that we are all transformed all the time…I am continually reflecting on how God is speaking to me. And as I reflect on that…it changes me. 

You will do great things if you set some time aside to reflect on the greatness that has been given to you freely. And the world certainly is hungering for…great things. (8)

---

---

Adapted from Strangers in the Province of Joy: Practicing Radical Hospitality on the US-Mexico Border by Mary Fontana. Copyright © 2026 by Mary Fontana. Used by permission of Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 10545. All rights reserved. https://orbisbooks.com/products/strangers-in-the-province-of-joy-practicing-radical-hospitality-on-the-us-mexico-border