MISSIONER TALES
I first learned of the concept of accompaniment, of “walking with the people,” from the Maryknoll Sisters. This, I thought, is the ministry to which I am being called here in Nicaragua.
Missioner Tales, Winter 2022
Missioners offer snippets of mission life in Peru, Tanzania and Guatemala as well as a mission moment at a parish in New York.
Missioner Tales, Fall 2021
Missioners offer snippets of mission life in Brazil, Bangladesh, South Sudan and Nicaragua as well as at the Maryknoll Sisters center in New York.
Missioner Tales, Summer 2021
St. Justin Centre for Children with Disabilities is a place here in Musoma, Tanzania, where you see kids struggling to walk, to communicate, or to do a simple drawing, but they welcome you with great love. Eighty kids live here with the loving support of the Immaculate Heart Sisters of Africa. I recently asked the sisters to give me a list of the...
Missioner Tales, Spring 2021
Missioner Tales in the Spring 2021 issue of Maryknoll magazine give snippets of mission life in Tanzania, South Sudan, Guatemala and Thailand.
Missioner Tales, Winter 2021
I first met Jose when he participated in my first Theater of the Oppressed group in a parish on the periphery of João Pessoa, Brazil, where I serve as a Maryknoll lay missioner. Jose (not his real name) was probably 20 years old and very active in the parish. He had to stop coming to our group when the young woman he was dating became pregnant....
Missioner Tales September/October 2020
On Sunday, Feb. 23, 2020, there was a special ceremony for the blessing of the first child of Emmanuel and his wife Angelina at their modest tent home. Emmanuel is a member of our Church choir at our U.N. camp in Malakal, South Sudan. During the celebration, the choir sang and we prayed in thanksgiving to God for the gift of this newborn baby...
Missioner Tales July/August 2020
The idea of making protective masks during the COVID-19 pandemic started in our Maryknoll lay missioner house here in Haiti, but we had no big plans in place. Then our Religious of Jesus and Mary friends offered us a sewing machine. Another friend, Geri Lanham, said Mercy Beyond Borders (MBB), a non-profit organization helping women, where she...
Missioner Tales May/June 2020
Teaching in the altiplano of Peru (at 13,000 feet above sea level) many years ago, I found myself in a unique situation. The school, which was just for girls, was a one-room building made of adobe with a corrugated tin roof. There were about six rows of worn wooden desks with attached benches. They were lined up three in a row from wall to...
Missioner Tales March/April 2020
I walked the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday with prisoners at one of the men’s prisons in Lima, Peru, where I work. In the procession the prisoners carried a heavy cross on their shoulders as they walked slowly in silence. As I walked along with them, under the hot sun, I realized each of us is carrying our own burdens. There is no need to...
