JOURNEYS FOR OPPORTUNITY

The Perez family eventually landed in Wall, Texas, where Freddy’s father worked in the cotton industry. Their story is one that is not uncommon in this part of the country. “I grew up with both parents being migrants,” Perez recalls, “and a couple of my friends were actually undocumented when I was growing up.”

The family would next move to San Angelo, where they operated a tortilla and burrito shop on the north side of town, selling to local building sites and businesses. The family became parishioners at St. Mary Parish. These roots continued to grow, and the family now owns their own restaurant, Amole’s Mexican Restaurant in Sweetwater, Texas. Perez notes that the communities of St. Mary in San Angelo and Holy Spirit in Sweetwater have both been supportive, taking in the family and helping to achieve the better life they came to Texas in search of.

Odima likewise eventually found his way to the territory of the Diocese of San Angelo, with a stop in the metroplex area along the way. After Reggie’s father passed away in early 2000, the family decided that the opportunities for the children in Kenya would be diminished with only one parent. With a brother already living in the United States, the family was able to move quickly, a process which Odima describes as almost overnight: “We got our visas and two weeks later we were gone.” Reggie arrived in Irving, Texas, with his mother and sister on December 18, 2000, at age 11. They were later joined by his other two brothers.

Odima’s mother worked to support the family, traveling two hours each way to work a part-time job in order to keep her children fed and sheltered. Odima speaks glowingly of the continual support offered by his mother. “She’s been my rock,” he says. After high school, Odima moved to San Angelo to attend Angelo State University, where he would later meet Perez and the two would venture together down the path to the priesthood that God had been calling them to.
 

JOURNEYS OF FAITH

After high school, both young men undertook the spiritual journey that accompanies youthful freedom and a search for meaning, each growing in their faith and purpose, each living out their own personal bildungsroman on the path to their true calling. It is here that their stories, spanning the globe to this point, begin to coalesce.

Perez found himself spending his spare time volunteering with House of Faith, an ecumenical Christian effort in San Angelo. It was there that he began to feel the first hints of the what would eventually turn into his call to the priesthood. “That’s where I found my pastoral roots,” he says. “It’s really where I found my passion for ministry itself, for the marginalized.”

Father Rodney White, former vocation director for the Diocese of San Angelo, noticed this passion and saw something in Perez’s work with House of Faith. “I had actively tried to recruit Freddy,” White says, “and at the time he just wasn’t quite ready.” White noted that Perez “had a real heart for service” that would benefit him as a member of the clergy.

Meanwhile, Odima, who admits that he was not always as committed in his faith as he could have been, had what he refers to as a conversion while attending Angelo State University. While the initial spiritual push garnered from his glimpse of a papal visit in his native Kenya is still with him, it was during his time in San Angelo that he felt this “conversion of going back to God, kind of focusing back on my faith, going back to church.” The church that he became involved with was St. Mary Parish in San Angelo, the same parish that Perez called home.

“That community was so welcoming,” Odima says of the people of St. Mary’s. “They greeted me at the doors when I walked in, they greeted me when I was in the pew so I didn’t feel like a stranger,” and, perhaps most importantly, they invited him to come back.

Both Odima and Perez met Father David Herrera, who was the pastor at St. Mary’s at the time, as college students, and both cite him as one of their key influencers and an example of what the priesthood could be, both for them and for the community. Perez says that Father David caused him to start “challenging what I was doing with my whole life. At the time I was just a college student … kind of looking for myself.” Odima notes that the welcoming nature of the community at St. Mary’s was a reflection of the kind of man leading the flock. “The pastor kind of sets the standard; the people will follow.”

Both became actively involved in ministry opportunities at St. Mary’s, joining youth ministry and college ministry programs. Both mention the college ministry program run by Deacon Roy and Minnie Ibarra as influences in their spiritual growth, as well as the youth ministry of Ernie Acevedo, whose “love and passion for ministry as a lay person has been really inspiring in my own vocation,” Odima notes.

Odima says that he could go on for days when asked to list the people who influenced him on the path to the priesthood, and listening to his excitement in telling his story, it doesn’t seem like an exaggeration. Referencing that it takes a village to raise a child, he views his spiritual growth in a similar manner. “I’ve had my tantrums like a teenager, I’ve had my terrible twos,” and the people who have helped him in his spiritual growth are too numerous to mention. First and foremost, though, is his mother: “she’s the one who baptized me, she’s the one who took me to my first communion,” and who has supported him through his entire life.

JOURNEYS OF FORMATION

With the active faith lives the two had been leading after high school and the broad support structure available to them, it’s not altogether surprising that they ended up considering taking the next steps.

Perez notes that by the time he fully decided to consider the priesthood, he was quite active in ministry service around town. In addition to ministries at St. Mary, he also mentions working with Deacon Steve Zimmerman at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. “I was kind of doing full-time ministry,” he says, “if not with House of Faith, with the cathedral, with St. Mary’s, in one capacity or the other.” He was also encouraged by a friend to offer his services to the National Evangelization Teams (NET) Ministries, which he did, spending a year in Faribault, Minnesota.

Both future priests were recruited as seminarians for the Diocese of San Angelo by the late Father Barry McLean when he was serving as vocation director. “God bless Father Barry,” says Perez, who had already been considering discernment with the Franciscans and other religious orders, when McLean “kind of grilled me as to why I wasn’t discerning for the diocese.” Perez shares a story about Father McLean that helped cement his decision: “It was a phone call that he made in my presence to the Carmelites in Christoval, telling Mother Mary Grace to pray for a certain Freddy who needs to discern his call.”

For Odima, it was a case of introspection that led to the decision to pursue formation for the priesthood. While at Angelo State University, he realized that his reasons for coming to San Angelo for college and for choosing his major were crafted out of a desire to help people. Upon considering the priesthood, he realized that it presented an opportunity for him to follow his desire to help people. He says, almost whimsically, that he “decided to try it out, and I guess that was back in 2009, and in 2010 I ended up going into the seminary, and I’m still trying it out.”

“It looks like I’m actually going to get ordained,” he concludes.

Odima and Perez, who had known each other through the ministries at St. Mary Parish, ended up joining the seminary at the same time, and, with the exception of one semester, have been studying alongside each other at the same schools ever since. “I’ve been with Freddy since day one,” Odima points out. “A lot of people don’t realize that — I was with Freddy back when college ministry started, so even before I went to the seminary, he’s been there. So he’s been my brother since day one.”

This shared journey resulted in a rare treat for St. Mary’s parishioners last year, when both Perez and Odima were ordained transitional deacons in a joint ordination Mass at their home parish. They will continue this shared journey this month as both are ordained to the priesthood on Saturday, June 9, 2018, at 10:30 a.m. at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in San Angelo. St. Mary’s will again be home to rare festivities as they see the First Mass of Thanksgiving, celebrated at a new priest’s home parish, twice in the same weekend. Perez will celebrate his first Mass as a priest on Saturday, June 9, at 5:00 p.m. Odima’s first Mass will be on Sunday, June 10, at 12:00 p.m.

THE JOURNEY AHEAD

After years of school and studying in preparation for the priesthood, it is easy to conceive of this as the culmination of years of hard work, but both Odima and Perez are aware that, while their ordination may signal the end of one phase of their lives, the real work is just beginning.

Perez excitedly looks forward to “getting to work!” Odima is anticipating “finally figuring out who I am.” He clarifies, saying about reaching the end of his time as a seminarian and the beginning of his time as a priest, that “I’m excited to see who I’m going to become, the type of priest I’m going to become, the type of spiritual father I’m going to become … the type of disciple I’m going to become.”

Those who know them will have no doubt that they are up for the challenge.

White, the former vocation director, could see from working with them that “they both have a great love of the Lord and a love for the people,” adding that “they focus on their community, and that’s of such great import, for a priest to be firmly grounded in a community.”

This connection to community is something that Perez mentions when he speaks of the priests who influenced him growing up as the son of Mexican immigrants, including Father Herrera and Father Joe Vasquez (now the Bishop of Austin). Perez noticed these Hispanic priests, who looked like him and talked like him, fulfilled many roles within the parish community. A priest, he says, aside from being a pastor, is seen as a “problem solver,” part lawyer, part psychologist, a sort of community “everything-man.”

Odima, whose community stretches the globe, and who describes himself as “multi-national,” knows that his interactions with the community will be part of what defines him as a priest. Growing up in Kenya and the United States, he feels, has influenced how he sees people. “I see the need of taking care of people,” he says, “listening to people, knowing that everybody has a story and each person’s individual story is different. A lot of people have been through hardships that we can’t even imagine, but all it takes is listening.”

“I appreciate each person I meet. I appreciate each story I hear,” Odima continues. “Hopefully it calls me to always remember to listen to people.”

As is perhaps fitting for two newly-minted priests who have shared so much of their journey together, the first community they serve will also be shared. Both will be assigned to parishes in Midland for their first priestly post in July. Perez will serve as parochial vicar at St. Stephen Parish; Odima will serve as parochial vicar at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish.

Both will similarly be working closely with priests who were influential in their own formation. At St. Stephen, Perez will be working with Father Rodney White, the former vocation director who helped guide him through his time in the seminary. He is “excited to live that sacramental life with the people,” and to “really reach out to those who are in need to find God in one way or another.”

Meanwhile, Odima will once again find Father David Herrera, his former parish priest from San Angelo who was there when he first found his vocation, when he begins work at Our Lady of Guadalupe. “There’s nothing more I can ask for,” he says. Odima looks forward to working with young adults, who he says make up a sometimes forgotten “middle ground” between the high-focus ages of confirmation and marriage.

St. Stephen and Our Lady of Guadalupe are roughly five and a half miles from each other. Odima and Perez, who have grown into their priesthood together, will begin this portion of their lives in close proximity as well.

First, though, comes the ordination.

Though their families’ stories begin on opposite sides of the world, this portion of their journey will culminate in the same Mass. Odima views this as “brothers getting ordained.” He notes that it is “the rare time where guys who know each other from before, and they’ve been through everything together, and they’re getting ordained together as deacons and as priests now.”

His excitement at sharing this experience with his spiritual brother is evident: “It’s pretty cool, man!”