SAN DIEGO — The young adult group at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish has certainly come a long way.
Natalie Valle, one of the group’s nine leaders, remembers what happened on Feb. 9, 2024, when the young adult group at the Barrio Logan parish tried to hold a kick-off event.
“We had the biggest hall reserved for us,” she said, “because we thought we were going to fill it up … We had a game night planned, and we had food, and prizes, and raffle and everything.
“And nobody showed up,” said Valle, 26, who found herself standing there with four others who had helped plan the event.
Their disappointment quickly turned to laughter. And, when they left, they were filled with a sense of determination for the future.
Today, that group is active and growing. It meets at 7 p.m. on the first and third Fridays of each month. Those meetings consistently attract at least 20 people and sometimes more, with participants ranging in age from their mid-20s to mid-30s.
“It has gotten to the point where we have young adults that come from different parishes” who found out about the group’s events from word-of-mouth or social media, said Valle. She shared that someone from Mission San Luis Rey Parish in Oceanside had reached out via Instagram about attending an upcoming event.
Valle, who is also the parish’s director of faith formation, said that the first of the group’s two monthly meetings, which is called “Faith & Friends,” is “more faith-based.”
A July 18 installment saw Jesuit Father Brad Mills, a parochial vicar at Our Lady of Guadalupe, sharing his vocation story. Valle said this was followed by a Q&A session, where young adults were able to ask “questions that maybe they’ve never asked a priest before.”
The second of the group’s monthly meetings skews “more social,” Valle said, even though its leaders still strive to educate attendees about the faith.
On the second Saturday of most months, the parish’s 6 p.m. Mass becomes a specially-designated Mass for youth and young adults. The Mass is bilingual instead of in Spanish, and young adults serve as lectors and extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion.
“We’re trying to involve the young adults with the community in the parish and vice versa,” Valle said.
“Young people today are searching for community, for a place where they belong and other young people welcome them,” said Maricruz Flores Strauss, director of the diocesan Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry.
Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, she said, is “one of the many parishes that have rebuilt their group from the ground up.”
Flores Strauss, who previously directed that parish’s youth ministry, said that the current group is “the most consistent young adult group the parish has had in years” and represents “one of the fastest-growing ministry groups in our diocese.”
“In an area that was once deemed a rough neighborhood,” said Flores Strauss, “it is great to see young families and young adults participate in the life of the parish.”
She noted that 16 young adults from the parish signed up for this year’s diocesan Young Adult Retreat, which was held Sept. 12 to 14 at Whispering Winds Catholic Camp and Conference Center in Julian. This was the largest group from a single parish to register.
Jesuit Father Scott Santarosa, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, said, “the young adults are stepping into … leadership roles in the parish.”
At the parish, which has been at the forefront of responding to the federal immigration crackdown, young adults have delivered testimonies about the impact that enforcement policies have had on their family life. Father Santarosa said that one young adult stepped up to lead an effort to recruit young adult volunteers “to help us keep vigilance on Sunday mornings, in case of ICE enforcement at our parish, which we hope never happens.”
“I see (young adults) as leaven in the dough of the parish,” he said. “When people see them active in the parish, they feel good about the life and the future of our Church.”
The parish group participated in the Diocese of San Diego’s young adult soccer tournament held July 19 at Mater Dei Catholic High School, and its team won first place. Some played, while others cheered them on from the sidelines.
Carlos Puerta, a 21-year-old soccer afficionado, helped to assemble the group’s team.
He said that, through the tournament, the group was able to “bring in” other young adults from their parish who hadn’t previously been active members of the young adult group.
There is a passion for young adult ministry at the parish.
Valle said that young adults are “hungry for a relationship with God.”
“Even though the youth is the future, the young adult is the now,” said Julian Velasquez, 32, another member of the group, who also serves as a catechist at the parish.
“I feel like, right now at Our Lady of Guadalupe, that pillar (of young adult ministry) is missing, and so we’re … building it,” he said.
Last year, during a parish retreat on synodality, Father Santarosa was surprised to hear young adults saying that they “felt invisible” at the parish.
“I had to admit that, when I preach, I often don’t preach to that age group,” he said. “So, I feel like we need to help them feel seen, and heard, and feel their importance as a parish. This is why we have to be committed to investing in our young adults.”
Velasquez said that he returned to practicing his faith about three years ago, when he signed up for confirmation classes, received the sacrament, and went on to teach catechism classes and join the young adult group.
How has the group helped him?
“I feel like it’s filled a gap that I thought wouldn’t be able to be filled again,” he said.
With the parish’s support, the young adult group’s leadership has committed much time to their burgeoning ministry.
Leaders of the group have participated in the Loyola Institute for Ministry’s FIELD Project through in-person meetings in New Orleans in May 2024 and 2025, followed by bimonthly Zoom meetings.
According to the website of Loyola University, New Orleans, the FIELD Project – an acronym for “Faithful Innovation: Encountering, Listening and Discerning” – helps parish ministry teams to “become bold and innovative in their approaches to ministry with young adults.”
Through their participation in the program, the young adult group received a total of $15,000 in grant money in 2024, which was distributed in two installments. For this year, the first installment of $7,500 was received in June and the remainder will come this December.
The group’s leaders also are attending monthly classes to earn a Diocesan Certificate in Ministry with Pastoral Juvenil. The classes began in February and will continue through November. The certificate, offered through the diocesan Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry, helps ministry leaders develop a pastoral plan for engaging Hispanic young people.
Valle said that the certificate program opened their eyes to the importance of making their group’s events bilingual in order to make them more welcoming to young adults who either only speak Spanish or are more comfortable speaking in that language.
She said that the bilingual nature of the group is one of the things that sets it apart.
“In a lot of places, it’s either Spanish or it’s English,” she said. “We’re bilingual.”
For Puerta, being part of the group’s leadership team has positioned him to help other young adults who are like he once was: “lost and not knowing where they belonged in the Church.”
“I just want to help them,” he said, “and let them know that God is always with them and that they’re always welcome to reconnect with God.”
He is enthusiastic about the group’s future.
“How we’ve grown in such a small amount of time … tells us that we’ve been doing things the right way,” said Puerta. “The fact that all of the leaders are with the right mindset and we all know why we’re doing this, it gives me a lot of joy.”
For more information about young adult ministry at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, contact Natalie Valle at (619) 233-3838, ext. 10218.
