By Leon Chretien—

When people think of pilgrimage in Mexico, they often imagine ancient ruins, colonial cathedrals, or barefoot devotion along dusty roads. While I love each of those images, my pilgrimage did not begin with a shrine or a vow. It began quietly, decades earlier, with a name given to me by others before I ever chose it for myself.

When I was twelve, pastors and preachers often called me “preacher boy” or “pastor boy.” I spoke well. I cared about people. I tried to bring peace into tense situations and noticed those who were unseen or misunderstood. At the time, I didn’t know whether those traits were gifts, expectations, or burdens—but they stayed with me.

As I grew older, another calling developed alongside the spiritual one: business. I learned how systems work, how to lead people, take risks, and carry responsibility. For much of my adult life, these two paths—ministry and business—ran side by side, sometimes complementing one another, sometimes pulling against each other.

At twenty-two, I left a corporate career to attend a small Bible school. I wasn’t chasing a title or a platform; I went for formation and clarity. I thought I would emerge and move directly into full-time church work. Instead, I came out with a growing sense that calling and timing are not the same. I returned to work, eventually owning and operating my own business for thirteen years, which I sold in 2024. Only in hindsight did I see that this was not a detour—it was preparation.

Mexico had been part of my story for years. My wife is Mexican, from Sonora, but my own introduction came much farther south, in Huatulco, Oaxaca. From the first visit, Mexico felt less like a destination and more like a conversation—layered, complex, deeply spiritual, wounded in places, generous in others, and very much alive.

When we began discerning a move to Mexico, we were clear about one thing: we were not moving to escape life. We were moving to engage it. We didn’t want to live on the perimeter of a place that had given us so much. We wanted community. We wanted to add value. We wanted to belong and to serve.

That question shaped everything that followed. Should we start something new? Join an English-speaking ministry? Or come alongside a Spanish-speaking church and serve where needed? We weren’t looking to build something of our own—we were looking to join what was already alive.

The answer came quietly, through our daughter. After moving to Huatulco in early 2023, she began attending Iglesia Ágape, a twenty-year-old missional church serving the Oaxacan community. The leadership sensed a need for an English service but lacked a worship leader. When they learned we were moving—and that I led worship with guitar and vocals—the alignment became clear. What they needed, we were already carrying.

Ágape English Service didn’t begin with strategy or ambition. It began with alignment. Eleven months in, my wife and I help lead worship, teach, preach, and share in leadership. But the heart of what we are doing has little to do with roles or titles. It has everything to do with pilgrimage—ours and that of the people who gather with us.

We serve a community spanning a wide range of spiritual experiences. Many arrive carrying pain or disappointment from past churches. Some were faithful for years in Canada or the United States but drifted after relocating and losing community. Others come with no church background at all, only a quiet sense that something essential is missing. Some live here full-time, some seasonally, and some are here only briefly—but seek Christ-centered fellowship while they are.

We believe every human being carries a God-shaped space—a longing that no success, relocation, or reinvention can fully satisfy. Our role is not to fill that space for people, but to walk with them as they rediscover the One who can.

That is where Mexico became a pilgrimage for me. Not a single dramatic moment, but a long movement. Not a holy site, but a steady surrender. My journey south was not about leaving one country for another; it was about returning to a calling spoken over me as a boy and refined through decades of work, faith, responsibility, and failure. Business taught me structure and stewardship. Ministry taught me listening and presence. Mexico became the place where those streams finally converged.

Pilgrimage, I’ve learned, isn’t always marked by spectacle. Sometimes it looks like weekly gatherings, shared meals, worship, and sitting with people in their grief and questions. Sometimes it means choosing community over comfort, faithfulness over visibility, and long obedience over quick results.

I did not come to Mexico to find God. I came because God was already calling—and Mexico became the place where obedience finally felt whole.