Mission Office

Director of the Office of Mission and Evangelization

The Office of Mission and Evangelization is located at the Provincial House in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This location physically places it between the Navajo, Pueblo and Hispanic missions of the Southwest that are served by the friars of Our Lady of Guadalupe Province.

The Province Director of the Office of Mission and Evangelization promotes financially and otherwise the work of the missions and evangelization with and among the friars of the Province.

In addition to the mission appeals for funds and prayers in parishes, the director serves as a public relations person for our domestic missions. He prepares brochures and other materials about the missions to be used in promoting our missions.

 Future Plans for this Expanded Office

We plan to advertise our mission work by publishing electronically a monthly newsletter about our missions and their work and activities. This would not be an appeal for funds, but rather simply information about our missions, their culture, and the work and projects of our missionaries. The newsletter would be sent directly to each person’s e-mail.

If you would like to subscribe to this free e-mail newsletter send an e-mail to our office e-mail:  joenelsofm@aol.com with “Newsletter” in the subject line and include your name and e-mail address.

We also plan to develop materials, such as DVDs, arts and crafts, etc. about our missions which could be lent to Catholic schools and parishes to educate children in the schools and people in the parishes about our missions and how they also are called to be missionaries.

We hope that in the talks to parishes and otherwise we can promote LAY mission work, not only in our Franciscan Partners program but for all Catholic lay missionary programs, for example through the Franciscan Mission Service, and the Catholic Volunteer Network.

We are thinking of sponsoring, in the future, trips of youth and adults to our missions to acquaint them with the different cultures and the work of the missions and also coordinate short term volunteer programs for missionary parishes if they wished them. If you might be interested in something like this please contact us.

As director I visit our mission sites to support the missions and missionaries and to acquaint myself with the work of the missions.

As we try to broaden the scope of this office we are putting more emphasis on the Evangelization part of our office. Besides asking for financial and prayerful support from parishes we will be offering them evangelization programs such as parish missions, retreats, Advent/Lenten programs of one or more days, giving talks on the theology of mission or other topics in so far as friars are available to do this work.

Since part of evangelization is promoting the gospel values, we will try to promote the values of Peace and Justice and Care of Creation. To assist in this work of evangelization a group of several friars will form a “think tank” for advice and promotion of this work along with the director.

If you would like more information from this office, or would wish to make a donation to the Province´s mission work, then please call or write Fr. Joseph Nelson at: