It was in the San Diego church at Pitiquito where I felt the strength of faith. Pitiquito is a quiet agricultural town. The church was built on a hill and is now surrounded by the town. It is the oldest church with surviving indigenous art in Sonora.

I shifted the transmission into park, punched the lock-all-doors and walked away from the Grand Marquis leaving it in Santa Rita Hotel's parking lot in Tucson.

For the first time, in 8 years of travel in Mexico, I was taking the bus.

I joined a group in the parking lot to visit eight Sonoran Missions founded by Father Kino, a Jesuit Priest born in Italy, who left a spiritual and architectural heritage in northern Mexico/southern Arizona. In fact, when Arizona honored Father Kino by placing his statue in the Capitol, it spurred Mexico to put its archeologists to work to find Father Kino's grave and prove that Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico had the greater claim to this illustrious, influential settler and priest.

Our academic guide was Robert Vint, the architect who oversaw the restoration of the magnificent, white baroque San Xavier del Bac, the exquisite jewel of the Kino Missions, just south of Tucson.

Our visit would include the missions at Cocóspera, San Ignacio, Magdalena, Tubutama, Oquitoa, Atil, Pitiquito, and Caborca. The tour was sponsored by the educational, non-profit Southern Mission Research Center. We would visit the missions and the Sonoran Desert. We were promised a margarita party and afternoon picnics.

I expected simple Jesuit missions, missions constructed cookie-cutter fashion using the same template and I thought I'd have to suppress the "You've seen one, you've seen them all" attitude.

I hadn't thought about my companions, their diverse backgrounds and interests, or the desert with its variety, the history of the area, or even the towns, their size and geographic setting.

I was soon surprised. The tour could have been named Diversity.

Our group was made up of two doctors, a retired judge, an architect, a couple of artists, a gymnast instructor, a retired stockbroker and a cowgirl, plus wives and husbands. Nick, a former National Parks Guide, lead our group. His wife Birdie complemented the tour's goals by leading with a nature walk at Lake Cuauhtémoc and educated us about desert plants. She explained how plants evolved survival mechanisms for life in the desert. She taught us about reproduction, plants inter-reliance with desert animals, their use as food sources and how desert plants are challenged by invasive species.

We visited country villages and city towns. Each site and mission church was distinct, attractive, clean and often inviting for picnics. We first picnicked at the ruins of Cocóspera that stood high on a hill, overlooking fields bereft of population. The silhouetted church's façade, supported by scaffolding, was in a state of deterioration. For a second picnic, we gathered at a river, down the hill from a fortress-designed church at Tubutama. A light breeze carried wisps of white cottonwood parachutes that peppered our meal.

The final picnic, next to San Ignacio's, the most Jesuit emblematic church, was held in the backyard garden of Señora Josefina Gallego. She raised parakeets in a large screened rectangle the size of a small garage. Fruit trees shaded us while a junked 1959 Chevy with a 1987 license plate added to the rural ambience.

We bused through rural agricultural country with irrigated fields pocked with stone outcroppings. Ocotillo bloomed in the lush desert. Cactus came in all varieties.

We stopped in Ímuris, sampled quesadillas and tamales made from local cheese.

We visited the church at Magdalena where Father Kino died. His bones, exposed by the archeologists, rest under a protected dome. He is honored by a sunken plaza, embraced by arches and accented by a central fountain.

The plaza is both commercial and revered. Under the archways shoppers are offered religious objects of art, local crafts, leather goods, colorful embroidered dresses and ice cream, a real treat.

We investigated the missions one by one. Robert Vint, the architect, explained differences in style, and how they were constructed over a range of time. He pointed out renovations and additions. Some missions had been transformed from Jesuit to Franciscan by embellishments, which the Franciscans added.

The missions were located in a variety of settings and towns. We enjoyed the landscape, the topography and the desert itself.

We saw missions in all stages, from ruins, adobe melting, earth returning to earth at Atil, to a scaffolded church held in arrested deterioration, backlit by blue sky, serenely abandoned to its hilltop view of the surrounding valley at Cocóspera, to the well attended church ready for major renovation at Caborca.

It was in the San Diego church at Pitiquito where I felt the strength of faith. Pitiquito is a quiet agricultural town. The church was built on a hill and is now surrounded by the town. It is the oldest church with surviving indigenous art in Sonora.

The art is not pretty. The drawings are rough, bold, black lines on a white background. They were discovered after being hidden under whitewash for ages, and they tell the story from warning to sacrifice, to redemption and salvation.

The paintings post-date Jesuit Father Kino. Their symbolism is Franciscan. Death and resurrection are the themes. As you enter on the right, there are the dry bones, a skeleton and a verse from the Old Testament, the 5th Book of Daniel, the prophetic warning of destruction. You move down the aisle, pass the Virgin of the Apocalypse in Glory and walk towards the apse. The Evangelists support the nave, their names and their symbols clear: John-eagle, Luke-ox, and Mark-lion. Mathew-winged man is missing, destroyed by time.

The altar wall: the Passion and symbols of the Crucifixion. Overhead: the Holy Spirit. As you come back towards the entrance, on the opposite wall, you come to the New Testament.

The story is told. There is the promise of salvation.

These primitive drawings charge the viewer with a faith.

The Kino chain of missions gave us a feel for change and for survival. They echo the Sonoran Desert. They have been invaded and yet they still bloom. They have weathered history and are still vital.

This is the first story from my Forty Days in Mexico.
The next story in the series is Hermosillo and Quinta Nápoles.