And as I mentioned, the images that Gareth first
showed me were these communities,
these communities that I knew, that I spent my childhood at.
And of course, it was my mother's home
and so it was a very strong connection to these places.
And as many of you know, O'odham have been Catholic
for a long, long time.
And so the Catholic Church is very, very important.
It's a central place for communities.
And so we all know the churches very well.
We know the inside of the churches and the outside,
and they're important markers for all of us out there.
And so Gareth took pictures of some churches
that had been abandoned.
And there was one church that I knew very well
because we used to go there for a pilgrimage for the Saint
Francis feast day in October.
And anyway, it was that particular village
and it had been abandoned largely due to cartels
and things like that.
All of them left and went to another village.
And so it was very sad to see those images.
I knew about that village, that it had been abandoned.
But it was very striking to see the images
of an abandoned village and, certainly, an abandoned church.
And anyway, so I wrote some pieces
about the church there and sort of how we saw and interacted
with being Catholic there.