MCMINNVILLE — Corrina Crocker, a junior at Linfield College here, is deeply involved in her study of mass communications.

But for almost a month this summer, Crocker stepped into a world where a smile was the most advanced way to get a message across.

She lived in the land of the Tarahumara, a people high in the Sierra Madre of northern Mexico who have preserved much of an ancient culture. A Jesuit mission there brings health care and clean water to a people often beset by drought.

“It’s such a different way of life,” says Crocker, who grew up at Christ the King Parish in Milwaukie and attended the parish school. “They have so much less than we do. They are so thankful for what they have.”

She says the experience was a “huge wake-up call.”

While in Creel, a regional town in the northern state of Chihuahua, Crocker helped in a nutrition center for children who are malnourished or injured.

“I feel I want to be able to give back to those who are less fortunate,” she says. “Something I really noticed was how little the children had.”

She and her mother have been making an effort to collect warm clothes for the tribe’s children.

Crocker is learning Spanish, which helped somewhat in Creel, but the Tarahumara have their own language — Uto-Aztecan. In their villages, her bright smile was the best way to speak. Many members of the tribe are Catholic.

Members of Christ the King have long been support the mission to the Tarahumara, founded by a Jesuit priest in the early 1960s.