Missioner Tales

In Venezuela, I lived in barrio Nueva Tacagua. One of my neighbors was an elderly woman named America Lopez, who lived in a one-room shack with her daughter and three grandchildren. People called America La Loca, “the crazy one,” because she often acted out of touch with reality. One day, the late Maryknoll Lay Missioner Jim Sweeney came to our...

When I first arrived in Nairobi and was trying to learn how to navigate this capital city of Kenya, I would walk through Kibera, a huge informal settlement—or slum—with a Kenyan friend, Patrick. A member of the Christian Life Community movement, Patrick does volunteer ministry assisting HIV-affected children with education in Kibera. He visits...

Making do is sometimes all you can do inside the United Nations camp for internally displaced people in Malakal, South Sudan, where I serve as a Maryknoll missioner. Recently, that meant improvising a one-wheeled ambulance to get a couple of ailing women to the camp’s Doctors Without Borders hospital. The Catholic community at the camp, which was...

One Sunday returning from celebrating Mass in three different locations in the Diocese of Musoma, Tanzania, I was happy to park my motorcycle. Shortly afterward, however, someone came to report that an elderly woman was gravely ill in her village and asked that I come for the sacrament of the sick. Gathering my sick call set and the Eucharist, I...

On Wotje island in the Marshall Islands, we Maryknoll sisters were planning to head back to the main atoll of Majuro, but the plane was canceled until the next day. So I decided to take a long walk around the island, something I had never done before. After walking along the shore for about 90 minutes, I realized it was going to be a much longer...

I happened to stop at the home of one of my African friends in Tanzania. As I entered, I could hear all sorts of exciting noise coming from the living room. My friend and three others were playing Scrabble. They were really into it and talking in loud and animated voices. I thought this was a great way for them to improve their English. I asked...

In the March/April 2017 MARYKNOLL magazine, I wrote about a Guatemalan man, Antonio Perez, whose cataracts were so thick he was totally blind. Dr. Luz Galindo, the local eye doctor, and I worked to cure his eye infections and got him scheduled for cataract surgery. But three days before the operation, his wife Andrea came to tell me his face and...

I visit a public transplant hospital here in São Paulo, Brazil, where I offer my time and conversation. The patients are there to be treated for diseases such as leukemia and hemophilia. On my visits I have learned many details about serious illnesses, but I also learn about faith and patience. Some of the patients have to undergo treatment for...

  Our new mission in the southeast corner of South Sudan had just started a school where there had never been one for over 100 miles. The idea of going to school for little children who were accustomed to running wild and free, chasing the sheep and goats, was entirely foreign. However, when they heard that if they went to this “new thing...