Iván Enrique Frausto Medina

I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico on February 28, 1980.  I left Mexico in 1989 when I was only 8 years old.  During my first years in the United States, my life was not on the right path. I was doing drugs and involved gangs until eventually I began to be followed by my own friends who were trying to hurt me only because I wanted out of the gang. I was even almost shot. I lived one block away from my Catholic church and I never attended until my father got hurt, and then I realized that the only person in this world who helped me with each step that I took in my life was God, and that it only took ten minutes of my time to pray to him. He heard my prayers. In the year 2001, a friend of mine, Ariana, told me that we were going to clean the instruments that belonged to the church, but she really took to me to a youth group called SAULO DE TARSO, and they showed me the way to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.

In August of 2005, Father Irineo Callejas, an Oblate of St. Joseph, arrived at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Bakersfield, California. During his stay there, he formed a theater group in which I played many roles, but not anything big. During the next year (2006), he took us to a vocation retreat with our brothers from the Oblates of St. Joseph in California, and that’s where we met brothers Esteban and Miguel who are Oblates from Monterrey, Mexico.  It was during this retreat that I said to myself, “This is what I want… I want all of this to be a part of my life.”  Later on in the year, Father Irineo took us to the cabin (St. Joseph’s Villa in Soda Springs, CA) to experience and see how the life of a seminarian really is. It was not what I thought it was: it is something better, something supernatural, where they are following God’s steps in order to become one of his disciples.

I had tried talking to my family about my decision to enter the seminary, but none of them believed that I wanted to join the Oblates of St. Joseph and become a brother in the religious life.  Not even my friends believed that I was going to Mexico to join the seminary. On Sunday, January 2, 2007, my sister told me that my mom cried every time I left the house because she didn’t want me to leave, especially to another country.  But then she told me that she was happy for me.  She, along with my friends and other relatives, were happy because I was going to do God’s work. When I got on that plane, I asked myself, “Why me God?”  The only way to know God’s will is to pray, and most importantly, to have faith because I didn’t choose myself for this task — he chose me to do his work. All I said to him in my prayers was, “Yes, I commend my life to you; make me one of your disciples.”  All of the love that you receive by following God’s call in the seminary life you can only find by doing His Will. Becoming a priest is not hard; it is supernatural. So don’t be afraid, and remember that God is with you.