Catholic Formation in the Rockies: How Annunciation Heights Shapes Missionaries for Life
- André Escaleira, Jr.
- Jul 11
- 10 min read
From the mountains to the mission fields, the Archdiocese of Denver's camp is forming intentional disciples and sending them "down the mountain" to serve in faith, community and creation.
By Catriona Kerwin and André Escaleira, Jr.
In the heart of the Rockies, nearby Rocky Mountain National Park and under majestic Longs Peak, Annunciation Heights invites visitors to wonder at the beauty of God’s creation. The archdiocesan camp hosts visitors of all ages, including families, middle and high school students and group retreats. As a “place of transformative encounter with Jesus Christ,” Annunciation Heights aims to strengthen relationships with God, others, self and creation “by fostering experiences of authentic connection immersed in the beauty of God’s creation” with the goal of helping their visitors “live fully for the glory of the Father,” according to the organization’s mission statement.
A Catholic oasis in the mountains, visitors soak up the beauty of the location, the reverent but simple log chapel and the blessed silence of the wooded area, juxtaposed by occasional joyful shouts and campfire songs echoing through camp. Led by adult missionaries, the camp’s activities are marked with joy, sincerity and an emphasis on encounter.
Through the Altum Institute Missionary Program, Annunciation Heights welcomes missionaries from across the country for one or two years of formation, community and service. However the missionaries make their way to the Heights, each brings his or her unique story and gifts to the camp.
For Tim Smith, a veteran and missionary alumnus, finding Annunciation Heights was a godsend at a pivotal time in his life.
“After I got out of the Marines, I had a deep reversion to the faith and [was] seeking where to go next. I heard of Annunciation Heights, and it was a very obvious call that God was telling me to go there to take baby steps to be able to come back into communion with him,” he shared of the experience that would bring him into communion with God and neighbor.
Like Tim, many Altum Institute missionaries at Annunciation Heights are called “to the heights” to experience profound encounter and community — with God, others, creation and self. In fact, that four-fold emphasis is a key part of the missionary program — one that is incredibly transformative, said Callie Gubera, a missionary alumna now serving as the camp’s director of mission advancement.
“Jesus sanctified my relationships, first and foremost. I was able to see the world in light of the four relationships in a way that just continues to be with me,” she told the Denver Catholic. As a missionary, she and her peers developed the practice of checking in on these four relationships regularly.
To grow in that first relationship — a faith-filled friendship with God — missionaries receive deep, intentional spiritual formation from Father Ryan O’Neill, the camp’s spiritual director, who offers bible studies, daily Mass, weekly Adoration and other prayer opportunities for the missionaries.
“We were given a lot of tools for different aspects of just growing in intimacy with the Lord. That was just really, really beautiful,” said Joe Trujillo, a missionary alumnus, of the program’s spiritual formation. “The foundation that was under every bit of our formation was just being able to continually seek the heart of the Father and understanding ourselves through his eyes.”
As the missionaries grow closer to the Lord and see themselves as his beloved children, thanks to the foundational spiritual formation, they are able to engage their mission and their community with greater charity. While spending intentional time living, eating, praying and working together, the missionaries form a tight-knit community that flows from their closeness to the Lord — one that Amanda Smith, a missionary alumna, described as “the most beautiful and welcoming people that feel like family outside of your own family.”
In fact, this faith-filled community provides the perfect environment to grow in relationship with others — a fruit of one’s relationship with the Lord.
“There's this sense of safety and comfort that comes with these relationships because they're so strong and they're so intentional and so loving and good,” said Sarah Corsi, a missionary alumna.
In this kind of warm community, missionaries can bring their strengths, gifts and even flaws to the light and receive unconditional love.
Now, the community isn’t perfect — it’s made up of human beings, after all! The missionary alumni we spoke with didn’t hesitate to share how individuals in this community sometimes experienced rupture or conflict, but those challenges ultimately led to reconciliation and deeper trust — one of the program’s three pillars of formation.
“In community life, people would bring out the best in me, and they'd bring out the worst in me, but it was actually really, really important that they bring out the worst in me,” Will Muraski, a missionary alumnus and the camp’s director of youth and family programming, told the Denver Catholic. “Even after leaving Annunciation Heights, it's been really fruitful when I can find other people who will hold me to a standard and will kind of strive and journey with me.”
United to God and each other, the missionaries journey together in faith through creation, taking in the beauty of the natural world and thereby experiencing restoration in that third relationship, with nature. Nestled in beautiful Estes Park, Annunciation Heights’ location and programming give missionaries and visitors ample opportunity to experience wonder at God’s creation — another of the formation program’s three pillars.
“The Lord wrote himself into all of creation,” Trujillo said, “knowing that we would see that and that we will delight in that and take joy in that. And so he spoke that as a message, for its own purpose, but also directly to our hearts.”
By coming to know God, neighbor and creation better, each missionary comes to see his or her own place in the world, in God’s plan and heart. In a word, missionaries come to understand themselves as a gift in line with the beautiful statement of the Second Vatican Council: “Man … cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself” (Gaudium et Spes, 24). That understanding of humanity’s profound dignity is key to Annunciation Heights, as the third of the program’s three pillars of formation alongside trust and wonder.
“I was able to actually acknowledge the truth of who I was in the eyes of the Father. And from there, I would be able to give myself even more fully to the surrounding communities,” Gubera noted.
Carrying with them restored relationships — with God, neighbor, creation and self — Annunciation Heights missionaries eventually “come down the mountain.” Having integrated the pillars of formation — self-gift, trust and wonder — and the lessons from their missionary years into their daily lives, their time at the Heights continues to bear fruit.
“I remember identifying with Peter and the Transfiguration and being like, ‘Lord, it's so good here. Let's just set up camp,’” Corsi shared, recalling the difficulty of leaving such a beautiful place. “But it's [in] coming down the mountain that you are capable of being the light of Christ.”
Trusting in the Lord, she “came down the mountain” and providentially landed at Light of the World Parish in Littleton. There, she serves as the parish’s director of communications, giving of herself and sharing Christ’s light through various media.
For Gubera, the invitation to be Christ’s light keeps her at Annunciation Heights, where she invites others into the camp’s mission. Even still, she said, her experience as a missionary at the camp has formed her to give of herself professionally, personally and vocationally.
“I've just become more rooted, I think, to be able to give of myself fully to the Lord no matter what it is that I am doing occupationally,” she told the Denver Catholic. As Gubera prepares for her upcoming marriage to a missionary alumnus, she added, “It's gonna help us a lot in our walk as a future married couple.”
Similarly, married couple Amanda and Tim Smith find themselves better equipped to make a gift of themselves in their family life, thanks to the formation they received at Annunciation Heights.
“This all has really helped me now as a wife and a mother to do things that I may not want to do with grace and to offer everything up as a prayer,” she explained. “A lot of times, life is filled with things that we really don’t want to do, whether it’s for ourselves or for others, but I believe being a missionary at camp gave me the ability to handle these types of situations with grace, patience and to see the purpose in doing it out of love. I feel like it also gave me more of a selfless heart … and prepared my heart to enter fully into my vocation.”
In short, Tim added with gratitude, “If it wasn’t for God or camp, I would not have a single thing that I have now.”
Formed in their relationships with such a good Father and with each other, missionaries can’t help but grow in trust — the second pillar of the program’s formation. As they come down the mountain, missionary alumni bring that renewed trust in God and neighbor with them as they find and foster community in their families, workplaces and living situations.
“Camp was such a beautiful example of what a Catholic community can be, and so in that way, it’s like a little bit of a guiding star for me,” said John Rabaey, another missionary alumnus now living in Fort Collins.
Impacted by the experience of faith-filled community at camp and having seen “a lot of growth in the ability to be friends with people in a Christ-centered way, especially to just sort of reconcile with people and frictions,” Rabaey now strives to bring people together in peace, trust and shared faith in his own circles.
As they give of themselves and build community in their own ways, Annunciation Heights missionary alumni can’t help but sit back in wonder at what God has done in their lives, in their neighbors’ lives and in the world, especially in and through his creation.
“The amount of time we spend outside is awesome,” Muraski said of the practices his family has adopted to cultivate that wonder. “We'll just go on a walk or go hike or even just sit out front and dig in the dirt.”
That focus on wonder “put us in a really good place of gratitude,” Muraski added.
“What wonder is at its very core is just being attentive to the Lord’s voice and being curious of the way that he’s speaking to us,” Corsi explained.
The gift of the Holy Spirit cultivated at Annunciation Heights — in creation and in humanity — continues to help missionary alumni receive each person they encounter as a unique expression of God’s creative love, as “holy ground,” to use a biblical image for encounter favored by Pope Francis.
Now, this growth, self-gift and service are only possible in and through the grace of God, whom the missionary alumni came to know more profoundly at camp. Through their continued relationship with him, the missionaries find themselves sustained in their missions, vocations and circumstances.
For Muraski and his family, missionary life “really started us off on a good foot when it comes to our family values.” With a family mission statement and regular habits of prayer, they find themselves rooted in Christ as they engage his plan for their lives.
In Rabaey’s case, it was Father O’Neill’s support in forming a plan of life with commitments to regular prayer time that set him up for spiritual success post-mission.
No matter where the Lord leads the missionary alumni after their time at the Heights, they bring their gifts, perspectives and experiences, coupled with a renewed zeal for mission, to a world in need of the hope of Christ.
As an electrician, Tim Smith has the opportunity to have “not just an open heart but an open tongue about God, allowing God to be the subject of conversation in all personal, professional and mission life” in the workplace. In this way, he strives to live in a way that confounds the world with countercultural witness, praying at work and staying calm in difficult situations.
Rabaey, an engineer, also finds himself bringing faith into the workplace — even if only through seeking to love others as Christ would love them, forming connections and serving others.
“This is really hard for me, but I'd definitely say there's a lot more comfort when it does come to talking about the faith than there would have been if I hadn't been to Annunciation Heights,” he shared. “It's still pretty challenging, but I feel like when I do end up in a conversation that goes that direction, I'm able to share about my faith a lot [more] peacefully than I would have been able to otherwise.”
For Trujillo, the zeal for mission fostered at Annunciation Heights inspired the launch of Mission House Denver, a formative community for young Catholic men that draws from insights into community and formation he learned at the Heights.
“A lot of the things that we do here in our community life are things that I was able to learn and receive as a missionary at Annunciation Heights,” he said. “Living in community with the missionaries and the staff taught me a lot about living in a community with the men here that I’d be with, especially in pouring yourself out and giving of yourself.”
That zeal for mission goes beyond his work at Mission House Denver and permeates all areas of his life, Trujillo added.
“The way that we are called to live on mission has really actually made me, and more so than ever before, want to be better at that for my own family,” he told the Denver Catholic.
As these missionary alumni “come down the mountain,” it’s clear that their formation at the Heights leaves them with much to unpack — not only in suitcases, but also in lessons, insights and spiritual fruit. Their commitment to living intentionally not only enriches their personal growth but also inspires a deeper dedication to their neighbors, friends, families and communities.
“I think those are probably the most useful years of my life, and I'll continue to see that unfold for years to come,” Muraski concluded.
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For more information about the Altum Institute missionary program (year-long or summer), visit the program’s website.
To support the Altum Institute, consider attending Fiat Fest — a daylong event at Annunciation Heights, complete with an adventure race, great food and music, and plenty of time for community! For more information, click here.
For more information about Annunciation Heights, their mission and programming, visit annunciationheights.org.
