NORTH RIVERDALE — During her service trip to Quiché, Guatemala, Emma Barona says the schoolchildren of the community approached her and her peers — eyes wide with wonder. They had never before seen someone with curly hair. Or Blonde hair. Or red.  

One by one, the children spilled out of their classrooms to meet the visiting nursing students from the University of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bronx. 

Barona, a rising senior nursing student from Howard Beach, said that she was struck by their curiosity, joy, and innocence — and that while what she saw in that community as disparity, they saw as their divinity. 

“It made me realize how big our world is in America, and how small theirs is. It was so different, because we have the same eyes, and I’m seeing in black and white, and they’re seeing in color. I’m only looking at the tree, but there’s a whole forest,” she said. “What in my eyes looked like poverty was actually their gold.  

“They were so happy — with so little. It’s always about God to them.” 

In May, seven nursing students from the University of Mount Saint Vincent traveled to the highlands of Guatemala, a predominantly Catholic country, for a weeklong mission trip with a dual purpose: to offer basic healthcare education in underserved Indigenous communities and to live out the university’s mission of compassionate service. 

After a COVID-related hiatus, the university revived its mission trips to Guatemala in partnership with the Sisters of Charity, who have ministered in the region since 1971. Inspired by their decades-long presence in the town of Quiché, Catherine Healy-Sharbaugh, dean of the Saint Joseph’s School of Nursing, which collaborates with the University of Mount Saint Vincent nursing program, saw an opportunity for student nurses to both serve and learn alongside the Indigenous Mayan community. 

“It just needed to live on, and it needed to be revived,” Healy-Sharbaugh said. “I felt like our School of Nursing and our students could be a wonderful resource for the people of Guatemala.” 

She believed that the trip would not only offer critical support to the community, but also give her students a firsthand look at what it means to educate with compassion and a sense of shared humanity. 

In remote villages where medical care is hours away, the nursing students worked in clinics teaching life-saving skills such as CPR, the Heimlich maneuver, and first aid. 

“One of the things that was very touching to me was that the community lost a child to choking, and they didn’t know how to do the Heimlich maneuver. … We brought films and pamphlets. We demonstrated,” Healy-Sharbaugh said. “A day later, a mother came up to me and said that she went home and she taught her family [the Heimlich maneuver]. In that moment, I realized that this was such a special relationship, and that this was more than just pushing mission kinds of things, but not really having something very sustainable and changing for life.” 

A Mission Beyond Medicine: Nursing Students Bring Healing, Humility to Guatemala While not Catholic herself, Barona is a Christian and chose to attend the University of Mount Saint Vincent because she was drawn to the values a Catholic institution has to offer. 

One of those values stems from the university’s namesake, Saint Vincent de Paul, who once said: “Go to the poor, for there you will find God,” which Barona says is why she felt called to go on the mission trip. 

“I think that it’s important to serve those in dire need, and in this case, it was about providing that specific type of care to these underserved communities, who lack the education that even us, as students, have acquired more just by God blessing us with an American education,” she said. “I wanted to not just say that I am a Christian, but that I walk in the way of a Christian.” 

Barona and Healy-Sharbaugh noted that while the medical education aspect of the trip was life-changing, so was the cultural experience. The group became immersed in the region’s native language, Quiché, as well as the Mayan traditions celebrating the strength of nature’s elements that the Guatemalan people blend with their Catholic faith. 

“One thing I took away from this trip is that love is a universal language. [The people of Quiché] could feel and see that we wanted to be there, and that we were appreciative of being there,” Barona said. “We went there with that mission, and they were very appreciative of it.” 

As she prepares for her senior year of college and eventually her career as a nurse, Barona says that she will continue to work and live by the values instilled in her through Catholic education and service work. 

“My choice to pursue a career in nursing is not just to have a good life and be financially stable, but it’s also to live in God’s image,” she said. “He says to treat your neighbor as your brother, as your own. 

“I think it’s a testament to my faith, and I think that the closest I will feel to him would be doing this act of service.