Ignacio Companions (IC Trips)

Campus Ministry’s Ignacio Companions (IC) program offers Faith-Based Service-Immersion Trips challenging students to live more fully the LMU Mission and to grow in theirrelationship with God. Each trip invites a transforming experience in whichparticipants’ faith and understanding of the world intersects and grows.Through immersion in different cultures and opportunities to be in service withand for local communities, participants discover the deep connection betweenjustice and faith. Participation in the IC program engages students in taking adeeper look at their lives, their faith, and their educational experience. The program challenges them to become individuals more fully alive.

Please note only current undergraduate students at the date of the trip will be considered for application.

• Are connected with a Jesuit Institution, Jesuit Apostolic Work, or Ignatian Inspired Religious Organization.
• Provide an opportunity for Ignatian reflection and spiritual examination and exploration while immersed in new cultural context.
• Provide an opportunity to explore the intersection of faith and justice as integral to our being a people fully alive.
• Provide an opportunity for a faith based experience with our host community.
• Provide an opportunity for participants to engage in a partnership and in solidarity with our host community.

Ignacio Companions Program Timeline 

The Trips

Campus Ministry offers several Faith-Based Service-Immersion Trips with the hope of assisting students to truly “Belong, Believe, and Become” during their time at LMU and beyond. We strive through these unique trips to help students see the world with new eyes and to explore their faith. Participants will seek integration of their experience through prayer, intentional theological reflection rooted in social analysis and scripture, an ongoing commitment to direct acts of service and justice when they return, and a life-style of solidarity with/and for those in need. These trip experiences are meant to foster a deeper understanding of the world and themselves. These opportunities are one practical way of embodying LMU’s holistic educational goal – academically, spiritually, and emotionally.

Our immersion trips strive to broaden student participants’ awareness of social justice, the promotion of justice, and global solidarity through direct community engagement. Students are immersed in new cultural contexts with unique experiences that broaden social awareness, promote personal faith development, and inspire a commitment to be in service with and for others. See the variety of trip offerings below:

Spring Break March 2-9, 2013 

El Salvador: Faith of the Martyrs and Current Communities

• visit historical sites including the UCA, cathedral and the home of Archbishop Oscar Romero

• hear first-hand accounts of the role of faith and justice in the daily life of Salvadorans 

• home stay and service with a water project

Jamaica Experience

• visit a home for the elderly and homeless run by Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity

• work at the Riverton City School, in one of Kingston’s most poverty stricken communities

• provide care to the children of the Bustamante Children’s Hospital 

• Jamaican natives will offer education on Jamaican culture and history 

Navajo Nation

• Work in a classroom throughout the week directly with Navajo students 

• Visit Monument Valley, and the Navajo Interactive Museum, story-telling with community

• participate in a Navajo sweat lodge ceremony

• stay in a hogan, which is a traditional Navajo home

Summer 2013 China 

Students will engage in faith-based international cultural immersion and community service work in mainland China. The cultural immersion component of the program will give students the opportunity to engage with native Chinese people and history. Specific attention will be paid to the experience of religion by the Chinese people and the practice of the Catholic faith in this unique context for the last 400 years. 

PARTICIPANT APPLICATION FOR ALL IC TRIPS: Link to the participant application below. Once submitted you will be contacted for an interview.

• IC Participant Application: for all Trips Click on this link and complete the IC Participant Application.

Trip costs are subsidized through Campus Ministry. All costs include airfare and/or ground transportation, room and board, service projects, and cultural immersion experiences.