A Maryknoll lay missioner follows her calling to Kenya, where she serves as a teacher for children at risk of homelessness.

Cornfields surround St. John Bosco Rehabilitation Centre, located on the outskirts of Kitale, a small city in western Kenya. This modest campus is home during the week to 59 children between the ages of 8 and 12. Some had never been to school before. Some had never even held a pencil.

Maryknoll Lay Missioner Theresa Glaser, a veteran teacher who joined the staff in 2023, describes the humble center lovingly: “It is holy ground.”

A project of the Diocese of Kitale, St. John Bosco has long partnered with Maryknoll Lay Missioners. Its goal is to rescue and rehabilitate children who were living on the streets or at risk of ending up there due to family problems. Social workers determine which children need the most help through interviews and home visits.

The center provides remedial education so students can enter the Kenyan school system and offers a structured, stable environment where the children can thrive. 

One of Glaser’s many roles is to reinforce the learning of English  — a crucial subject since in Kenya, English is the language of instruction starting in fourth grade. Most of her students, she notes, arrive without knowing a word.

The missioner invites children to her classroom to draw, read books or play board games. Coming across a weathered games table no longer in use at the center, Glaser spent some 60 hours obtaining special paint and varnish and then refurbishing it. Today, the table is back in action, and students line up to play snakes and ladders or checkers.

“Seeing them navigate a die, take turns, follow number sequences and think strategically made me realize how these simple games help children develop useful skills,” she says. “Who knew learning could be this fun?”

A typical day for Glaser may include preparing art materials, grading papers alongside fellow teachers, or filling jugs with water to teach students about volume and capacity. “I love the creativity of teaching,” she says, adding that she enjoys “designing lab-based, hands-on lessons.”

Glaser holds a doctorate in biological sciences from the University of Cincinnati. Prior to teaching, she worked for 14 years as a research scientist in the United States, Australia and Switzerland. She then spent decades teaching science in inner-city high schools in Ohio and South Carolina.

Glaser admits to being drawn to “challenging situations,” referring to her ministries. “That’s where the need is greatest.”

Arriving in Kitale, Glaser encountered a new level of need. “I’ve been a teacher for 36 years,” she says. “When I first saw a child holding a pencil sharpened at both ends, worn to a nub, I was stunned.”

She tells another story from St. John Bosco. To avoid the disruption caused by children sharing the classroom’s single eraser, she procured individual erasers. As she handed them out, children responded, “God bless you.” This simplest of school supplies, she says, is a valuable gift for vulnerable children experiencing scarcity and loss.

One of them is an 8-year-old boy whose family survives on just one meal a day. Before arriving at St. John Bosco, Noah spent his days begging on the streets and scavenging at a garbage dump for plastic or metal to sell. Noah’s brother, only a few years older than him, was killed in a clash with police.

In the classroom, students benefit from Glaser’s creative teaching techniques such as activities to develop basic math skills and games to reinforce English language learning. (Courtesy of Theresa Glaser and Maryknoll Lay Missioners/Kenya)

While situations such as these are sobering, Glaser finds daily inspiration in the resilience of the students and staff. Four team members are themselves graduates of the center.

“Rescued from situations of extreme poverty, they were rehabilitated and supported through secondary and higher education,” Glaser says. “Today they are teachers, social workers and mentors. They embody what’s possible.”

Glaser’s own path to mission began during childhood. She recalls that at her family’s home in Lima, Ohio, she once pointed to a map of Africa and declared to one of her four sisters, “When I grow up, I’m going to be a missionary there.”

Glaser says she “forgot that moment for 40 years,” but later, while teaching at a Franciscan high school, she felt a quiet pull toward Africa again.

In 2008, she joined a Catholic Relief Services HIV/AIDS care team in The Gambia. The team brought food and medicine to remote villages, supported orphaned children and ran mobile clinics in the West African country. “It was the best year of my life,” Glaser says.

With CRS she was a volunteer, Glaser says. “But my diocese, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, heard I was going to Africa and offered me a small amount of financial support as a ‘missionary.’ So I called my sister and said, ‘Do you remember what I said about going to Africa as a missionary?’”

When she retired from teaching in 2021, Glaser felt the call to mission again. “I realized I had a few good years of health and energy left — and I wanted to spend them in direct service to the world’s poorest.” She had known Maryknoll her whole life, thanks to the steady arrival of Maryknoll magazine at her family home.

Glaser, now 73, sees mission as a mutual exchange. “On a spiritual level, what I hope to accomplish is to be changed, stretched and challenged by the lives of the people with whom I interact. You don’t come away from the experience without being given as much as you may be giving.”

She often reflects on Saint Paul’s words in chapter 13 of the First Letter to the Corinthians. He wrote that in the end, there are three things that last: faith, hope and love. In people who are experiencing poverty, she says, she sees those virtues lived out.

“I am not saying ‘it is good to be poor because the poor are happy,’” Glaser says. “But maybe my relative comfort and wealth has resulted in a diminished practice of love. I’m learning from them.”

Her spiritual life is sustained by daily Mass (she rises at 4:30 a.m. to walk 30 minutes to the Immaculate Conception Cathedral) and by small, intentional acts.

On hard days, looking ahead keeps her going: “I imagine what these scruffy little kids will become in 10 or 12 years.” Glaser watches them play on the games table she lovingly restored — and she gains an understanding of her own past that led to this moment.

“By Kenyan rules, kings can move anywhere across the board,” Glaser says of the game of checkers. “I see how these children have gone from life on the streets to schooling that opens doors to brighter futures.”

The missioner reflects, “I also think of my path from research scientist, to teaching in inner-city schools, to now serving in Kenya.

“In this least glamorous role, I’ve found the greatest reward: supporting children so that they, too, might be ‘kinged’ in the game of life.”

Featured image: Maryknoll Lay Missioner Theresa Glaser says in mission she has found “the greatest reward.” (Courtesy of Theresa Glaser and Maryknoll Lay Missioners/Kenya)