Missioner Tales

  Maryknoll Father John Felago relates that when he was working as a missionary in Egypt, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers in Cairo had a local Muslim woman prepare their meals. Her name was Nigets. She prepared food for two days’ eating. One day Nigets called Father Felago to come into the kitchen to taste the food she was preparing. She...

After a long meeting on prison reform for women, in downtown São Paulo, Brazil, where I serve as a Maryknoll lay missioner, I decided to walk home instead of facing the crowded, rush-hour subway. As I was passing through a small park, I ran into Grace, a young woman from the Philippines whom I accompanied for many months last year when she was in...

Before Christmas when the readings at Mass are from the prophet Isaiah, the Scriptures came to life for me. “The eyes of the blind will be opened,” Isaiah said. Here in Guatemala, where I serve in mission, Andrea is an old woman whose eyes are so milky white that she can barely see. Since I don’t speak her Quiché language, I asked Miguel, a young...

Missioner Tales, January & February, 2017. Part of the reality of being in mission in Mwanza, Tanzania, is the need to have a guard outside our home at night. My wife and fellow Maryknoll lay missioner, Ashley, and I have employed the same young man as our night guard for the past one and a half years. His name is Faraja, which means...

Missioner Tales, November & December 2016 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. Initially, my walk was with the farmworkers of the state coffee farm of La Fundadora in the magnificent mountains of...

For years, Don Agustin Lazarte was an itinerant catechist in our St. Francis Xavier parish in the village of Monte Verde, Santa Cruz, Bolivia. He would spend a week or a month in a village, helping with ceremonies in the chapel, visiting the country schools and consoling the sick, or reading the novena prayers for the deceased. His education was...

Missioner Tales, September & October 2016 While I was driving a fellow Maryknoll lay missioner to the airport in Mwanza, Tanzania, we encountered a torrential rainfall. We made it to the airport but when I returned, I could not get through on the main road. A dala dala (public transportation van) was stuck in the mud and blocking the way. The...

Reading another mother’s Mercy Moment in the May/June MARYKNOLL magazine about the compassion she experienced when her son was injured in an accident moved me to share my own Mercy Moment. In May 2013 I got a phone call that my son, Mark, had been in an accident in Montana. He had been working in the oil fields there.  At the time of the...

Missioner Tales, July & August 2016 Veronica Calleman is a member of the Catholic community I serve in the U.N. camp at Malakal, South Sudan. When fighting among different ethnic groups erupted in the camp this past February, Veronica decided to flee from the area where she lived in a tent to another part of the camp that was more secure....