MISSIONARY TO MARS
A story about prayer in a world that feels silent
What happens when faithful Catholics do everything right — attend Mass, pray the prayers, follow the forms — and still feel that God is distant?
MISSIONARY TO MARS is a contemplative audio drama set on humanity’s first mission to Mars. Through the lives of settlers, priests, and spiritual directors in deep space, the series explores what it means to seek God when certainty fades and silence grows.
This podcast is for Catholics who love their faith but long for something more interior, more alive, more personal — a prayer that is not just spoken, but listened to.
Using story, dialogue, and reflection, Red Desert gently invites listeners into the ancient Christian practice of attentive, relational prayer — where identity, purpose, and vocation are not discovered through striving, but through listening.
Not a program. Not a method.
A space to learn how to hear.
Drawing from the writings of Donna and Jamie Winship as well as Amazon Kindle books by yours truly, Graham Landgraff, dual hosts take the notable "deep dive" into the notion of Kingdom of God Identity.
Given the premise that Our Creator knows us by name and has a unique plan to transform our world with His help, they explore the proven steps towards finding the silence in which to hear the Father's voice.
We are in this regard far more than a collection of God's children. Rather we are distinct players in a divine drama who may not even know we have a part to play because we have been trained to be deaf to our calling.
*If is worth noting that the half-hour discussion sinks in better over several listens as we become increasingly better at producing these podcast episodes. There are nuggets for you to gather in the realization that prayer is notably best when it is interactive and our hearing includes acting on what we hear.
11 Mar 2026
Episode - The Silence (Part Two) Three Reflections And Questions
Missionary to Mars: A Catholic Prayer Drama
Part Two of Episode One — "Silence": A Reflection with the Shema Council
The spacecraft has gone quiet. The engines have shut down. Marisol Reyes is in Mars orbit — and something she didn't plan for happened during those four minutes of fire.
In Part Two of Episode One, we step outside the drama to examine what it just showed us.
The Shema Council — a company of voices drawn from Scripture, Church history, and the tradition of conversational prayer — gathers around three moments from Marisol's story: the prayer she whispered without knowing it was one, the silence that felt like abandonment but may have been invitation, and her commander's challenge that set faith against competence as if the two were strangers.
Frank Laubach, Madame Guyon, Brother Lawrence, George Müller, John of the Cross, Andrew Murray — these are not names dropped for credibility. They are witnesses. Each of them arrived, by a different road, at the same discovery: that God speaks continuously, that the interior life is simply the discipline of learning to hear what has always been said, and that the stripping away of familiar spiritual supports is not a punishment. It is the gift underneath the gift.
The reflections are followed by three questions — not rhetorical ones. Ones with edges. Ones designed to locate, in the ordinary geography of your week, the exact lines Marisol is navigating sixty-three million kilometers from home.
This is not commentary on a story. It is the story continuing — in you.
For those who recognize the room she is standing in.
Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/missionary_to_mars)
Patreon.com/Missionary_To_Mars
6 Mar 2026
Silence
Missionary To Mars — Episode One: "Silence"
An Audio Drama for Spiritual Formation | Runtime: Approx. 45 minutes
Sixty-three million kilometers from Earth, with no margin for error and four minutes to live or die by her own calculations, mission specialist Marisol Reyes discovers that the prayer she's practiced for thirty years may not be prayer at all.
Red Desert is not science fiction. It is a desert story — the oldest kind. Like the fourth-century monastics who walked into the Egyptian wilderness until only God remained, Marisol has been placed somewhere the familiar supports no longer reach: no parish, no schedule, no comfortable noise to fill the silence she's been quietly avoiding. What happens in that silence — and in one unscripted moment of surrender at engine ignition — is the subject of everything that follows.
In Part One, hear the drama unfold aboard the spacecraft Ares VI as orbital insertion forces a crisis that strips away technique and leaves only the real thing underneath. In Part Two, the Shema Council — drawing from Frank Laubach, Madame Guyon, Thomas Kelly, George Müller, and the Desert Fathers — reflects on what Marisol encountered, why the dryness is not God's absence, and why Park Jin's challenge ("your invisible friend didn't write those equations") may be the most theologically honest line in the script.
Both parts close with a practice — not a suggestion. An invitation to sit in what Marisol is learning to sit in.
Bring your silence. Bring your trying. That's enough to begin.
Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/missionary_to_mars)
Patreon.com/Missionary_To_Mars
6 Feb 2026
Special Introductory Episode - Meet The Creator Of "Missionary To Mars"
Unlike the audio-drama format making up all the following episodes, we begin with something different, for us at least.
Thanks to the realm of technology we feature an interview of the Missionary to Mars series creator by the fictional Spiritual Director of the story, Father Ambrose Pierce.
And while we normally do not do talking heads on purpose, it seems appropriate to take a step back and answer some fundamental questions about the project itself.
Why do an audio drama?
Why is it set on Mars?
How can listeners participate themselves in prayerful exercises as story characters go through the paces themselves?
If the following important statement loses your interest, it does so intentionally so get ready:
THIS IS NOT A SCIENCE FICTION STORY DRAMA. IT IS HOWEVER A MODERN PARABLE MEANT TO REVEAL THE KINGDOM OF GOD TO A MODERN AUDIENCE.
Certainly, some statements or answers may need clarification and we welcome episode feedback. This is the start of a brand new enterprise and it is felt better to actually get product to air than to tinker with constant editing and improvements.
We thank you for your grace, your patience and encouraging participation.
P.S. A quick note--Some may wonder why the broadcast story and targeted audience is Roman Catholic. Does that mean no one else should listen or can benefit from what you hear?
Everyone can either learn or confirm what they already know, to grow in a greater appreciation of what it means to deepen a current existence's meaning through the interactive form of prayer with our Creator.
Be you atheist or any other religion, God desires communion with all of His children. That said, there are close to two billion Roman Catholics on the planet this year and despite solid affirmation by the Vatican, Catechism and the writings of the Desert Fathers or Saints, this kind of prayer formation seems lacking in volume despite strong evidence that parishes desire it.
Thank you and God richly bless you.
Graham
Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/missionary_to_mars)
Patreon.com/Missionary_To_Mars
29 Jan 2026
Missionary to Mars: An Audio Drama That Transforms How You Pray
What if the greatest mission field wasn't across the ocean—but across the solar system?
Missionary to Mars isn't your typical podcast. This is an immersive audio drama that follows Astronaut Marisol Reyes, a Hispanic engineering astronaut sent on humanity's first mission to colonize the Red Planet. But this isn't just science fiction—it's spiritual formation disguised as entertainment.
As Reyes faces the isolation of space, the challenges of building a new world, and the profound questions that arise when Earth is just a blue dot in the sky, listeners are invited into something deeper: a masterclass in contemplative prayer.
Each episode weaves gripping storytelling with ancient spiritual practices. You'll experience her internal struggles, conversations with God in the vast silence of space, and her discoveries about what it means to carry faith to the frontier of human existence. But more importantly, you'll learn to recognize God's voice in your own life.
This audio drama teaches you to:
Practice Ignatian discernment in everyday decisions
Recognize consolation and desolation in your spiritual life
Pray with Scripture using Lectio Divina
Find God in all things—even in the mundane and difficult
Listen for the "still, small voice" amid life's noise
Why an audio drama? Because stories bypass our defenses just as our Lord knew when He shared the Truth through parables. When you're engaged in Reye's journey—her doubts, loneliness, her breakthroughs—you're not just learning about prayer; you're experiencing it alongside her. The isolation of Mars becomes a mirror for your own inner wilderness. Her questions become your questions. Her encounters with God illuminate your own.
Whether you're new to prayer or have been seeking God for years, Missionary to Mars offers a fresh approach. No lecturing. No religious jargon. Just honest, human storytelling that creates space for you to hear what God might be saying to you.
Join Reyes and the Mars colonist's Jesuit Spiritual Director as she discovers that the mission to Mars is really a mission inward—and learn to hear God speaking in the vast, beautiful silence of your own heart.
New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe now and begin your journey.
Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/missionary_to_mars)
Patreon.com/Missionary_To_Mars
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