By Sarah Kozak

Note: This article was originally published December 2021

From the beginning of time, man has been charged with the task of caring for and protecting God’s creation. In Genesis 2:15 we read, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden to till it and keep it.”

Unfortunately in today’s culture, most people are extremely detached from the beauty and vitality of creation. In 2019, the average person spent a staggering total of 2 hours and 23 minutes a day on social media. In addition, a report from the Environment Protection Agency shows that, on average, Americans currently spend around 90 percent of their time indoors - where the air quality is two to five times more polluted than outside. The only time many people spend outdoors is while walking to and from their car.

However, this deep, innate need to connect with nature still exists within each of us for it is in the wild of His creation that we come face-to-face with the glory of our Heavenly Father.

For Adam, the discovery of the glory of God through nature changed his life forever. Adam’s faith journey began in college when he was going through an extremely difficult break-up. During this time, he was inspired by the joy of a close friend who was actively living out his faith. Adam realized that the answer to the emptiness he was facing could be found through a personal relationship with Christ.

As he continued to dive deeper and recognize the richness of the faith, Adam says, “Once the Eucharist became real to me, that was when I fully embraced Catholicism.” From that moment on, his life was never the same.

As his conversion deepened, Adam continued to grow more and more restless with his job at a cable TV company. The closer he grew to God, the more this sense of longing and adventure was awakened in him. St. Irenaeus once said, “The glory of God is man fully alive!” which could well sum up Adam’s journey from a life of apathy to intentional service.

Adam was put in touch with Ricardo Simmonds, the founder of Creatio - an organization that seeks to reach the hearts and minds of young people through an encounter with the beauty of God, His creation, and those around them. After receiving permission to take a sabbatical from his job, Adam stepped out in faith and left to serve with Creatio in Lima, Peru. Here, he participated in mission trips and also helped at a school for disabled children. This drastic change from the corporate world to a life of service-oriented simplicity changed Adam completely, and he knew that he had found his calling.

Now in his role as Executive Director, Adam’s responsibilities range from developing marketing strategies and networking with donors, all the way to organizing the various Creatio mission trips. The organization leads groups throughout the year on backpacking trips to places such as Colorado, Spain, and Italy. Additionally, Creatio is hoping to have 10 percent of those participating on these backpacking trips to be non-practicing Catholic, young adults.

Adam says, “We feel like our organization is called to reach those who don’t know God. To be that shallow entry point for people who would otherwise never set foot in a church.”

Creatio also leads service trips to Latin America, including Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru, which are geared more toward those who already have a relationship with Christ. Adam explains, “On our missions, we encounter Christ Himself in the poor, who show our missionaries what it means to live a joyful life with very little material possessions.” Over the next seven years, Creatio’s goal is to guide 10,000 young adults to fall in love with Christ and His Church through their ministry.

In joining Creatio, Adam has taken on a task similar to the one initially charged to the first Adam in Genesis: to care for and cultivate the beauty of God’s creation. As Adam says,

“WE SEEK TO BRING THE LOST BACK TO CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH THROUGH AN ENCOUNTER WITH BEAUTY.”

This job is no easy task. Young people today have largely given into the lies that the culture is feeding them, leaving little-to-no room for God. In order to touch the hearts of the youth, Creatio uses a three-step process in guiding them to Christ: first recognizing beauty, then encountering goodness, and finally, receiving the truth.

“The unfathomable beauty found on a backpacking adventure or on a mission to the Galapagos is that first point of attraction that gets them in the door,” Adam says. “From there, they see the goodness embodied in each participant and guide who are authentically striving to become saints. Only after diving headfirst into the beauty and goodness can they be receptive to hearing and embracing the Truth that the Church teaches.”

With so much relativism in the world, the adventure and challenges found in outdoor ministry provide an encounter with concrete reality for those who are searching for something that they can place their full faith in - a truth which is ultimately found in the heart of their Heavenly Father. “This is why adventure is so critical to what we do. We are awakening that deep, primal yearning for reality and community that our modern-day world has driven us away from,” Adam says.

Creatio’s pilgrimages and mission trips are available for both men and women, and they awaken the hearts of both in different ways. Talking about the “feminine genius” has recently become very popular, but society’s outlook on the “masculine genius” is both disparaging and confusing. This has led to the question, What is true masculinity? Adam believes that there are four key elements: exhibiting a warrior spirit, being good husbands, loving fathers, and strong spiritual leaders for one’s family.

He shares how impactful outdoor ministry can be in fostering the “masculine genius.” God uses the wildness and beauty of creation to prepare a man’s heart for a task which is even greater - the call to nurture, love, and protect the heart of a woman. It is beauty that awakens a man’s heart to fight for what has been entrusted to him. In Genesis this was the calling that God entrusted to Adam, to “shamar” Eve, which means “to guard” and cherish her. Man is inspired by the beauty of nature, but even more so by the heart of a woman.

Adam believes deeply in the complementarity of men and women, and offers some suggestions of how he believes women can help the men in their lives achieve holiness. He says it’s important to be patient and merciful in their shortcomings, but at the same time lovingly calling them to more. He also encourages forming strong communities of women that will build up and strengthen one another, and allowing men to invest in brotherhoods that will do the same for them. This way when the two sexes come back together they have been nourished, strengthened, and encouraged to be able to love one another even more deeply. Prayer, however, is the most powerful tool women have, and it is even more impactful when they invite the men in their lives to pray with them.

St. John of Damascus once said, “The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God.” For Adam, the mission of Creatio allows him to experience this on a daily basis. He now encourages every person he meets to become a steward of God’s creation by encountering and preserving its beauty - it is an essential part of our call as human beings. Simply walking somewhere rather than driving or having reusable water bottles add up to make a huge difference. These small sacrifices can be offered as acts of love and gratitude for the beautiful earth that God has fashioned as a gift for each one of us.

Adam’s life was transformed when he encountered the incredibly abundant freedom and joy found in a life of service to God and those around him. He says that, “Whether it’s on a hut trip in Colorado or walking hundreds of miles on the Camino de Santiago, we are craving that deep sense of adventure. And when we can find it in a place where a community embraces us and invites us into the beauty and truth of Christ and His Church, we find our true home, where we no longer have to suffer from despair, but can relish in the freedom of being who God created us to be.”

To organize a custom group trip with Creatio, reach out to info@creatio.org or check out creatio.org for upcoming Experiences.