Did you know 663 million people worldwide do not have access to clean drinking water? How are the Maryknoll Sisters helping?
Sister Len Montiel, M.M. who is on mission in Cambodia, has changed the lives of a family and an entire neighborhood by drilling a water well!
Sina is pictured below having lunch with Sister Len, she lost both parents to HIV/AIDS. The Maryknoll Sisters found her alone by her mother’s deathbed in a hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia years ago. Sina grew up in our foster home, but luckily we found her extended family about 3 years ago. Sina left our foster home to live with her aunts’ family.
Sina’s family contacted us one day in a panic because the main water source in their community dried up! We agreed to provide the neighborhood with a new well that they could use daily for water, as long as Sina’s family promised to make Sina continue her education.
Pictured above is Sina’s community using their new well. Your donations allow the Maryknoll Sisters to continue to make God’s love visible worldwide and help more families like Sina’s.
Sister Catherine Rowe, Maryknoll Sister for 53 Years Dies
Maryknoll, NY: Sister Catherine Rowe, M.M. missioner and nurse died on March 12, 2017 at the Maryknoll Sisters Center in Maryknoll, NY. She was 75 years old and a Maryknoll Sister for 53 years.
She was born in Stamford, CT on March 7, 1942 to Verna (Kielty) and Harold J. Rowe. She had three brothers: Peter, Fred and William. Her parents and her brother Peter have predeceased her.
Catherine’s family moved to Florida when she was a teenager and she graduated from the Academy of the Holy Names, Tampa, FL in 1960. From 1960-1963, she attended St. Vincent’s Hospital Nursing School in Jacksonville, Fl where she earned a nursing degree and graduated as an RN. In October 1963, she entered the Maryknoll Sisters Novitiate in Valley Park, MO from Christ the King Parish in St. Petersburg, Fl. At her Reception of the Habit, she received the religious name Sister Michael Elizabeth and made her First Profession of Vows on June 24, 1966 at the Maryknoll Sisters Center. During her stay at the Sisters center, she attended Mary Rogers College from 1965 –1967 and earned an A.A. degree.
In 1968, Sister Catherine was assigned to Hong Kong where she studied Cantonese for one year and did bedside nursing as a staff nurse at Our Lady of Maryknoll Hospital in Kowloon. On June 2, 1974 she made her Final Vows in Hong Kong. In 1978, she returned to the Maryknoll Sisters Center where she worked in the Sisters Nursing Facility until 1981; she then returned to Hong Kong where she took a refresher course in Cantonese for seven months before joining the Pastoral Ministry Team at Our Lady of Maryknoll Hospital. She remained in this ministry until 2000, when she returned to the United States to care for her elderly father until his death in 2008. From 2013-2015, Sister Catherine served at the Maryknoll Sisters Center in the Residential Care Unit, ministering to the congregation’s elderly and infirmed Sisters. She also visited the inmates at Sing Sing Prison on a weekly basis.
After fighting a debilitating illness for several years, she herself became a patient of the Maryknoll Sisters Center Home Care Unit where she died on the night of March 12, 2017. Sister Catherine generously donated her body to science.
This Easter, we thank you for giving light to the darkness that surrounds the poor, the ailing and the marginalized around the world. You’re part of our mission work, and without you we could not continue to provide hope to the hopeless.
In Jao Pessoa, Brazil domestic and urban violence caused by drugs and many other things leaves the women here in fear of their lives. Sister Euphrasia (Efu) Nyaki, M.M. runs a holistic healing center to help these women escape the violence that surrounds them. The healing center is located in the midst of the community. Holistic healing helps the women who have lost family members and/or who have seen the children of other women being killed. The post traumatic effects of such violent situations is extremely stressful on their nervous systems, our techniques focus on trauma healing. Many health problems are associated with this type of stress, for example: nervousness, rapid heartbeat etc. The center provides workshops and individual healing– without using any medication except for some herbal plants and teas.
Currently at our center, the women help others with healing, and at the end of the month we take out all the expenses for the center and the women volunteers divide what is left among themselves. It comes out to a little less than the minimum salary in Brazil, which is about $200 per person. They live very minimally on that amount, so we would like to improve the amount of salary we can give them. The reason why the amount available to them for a salary is so small is because we are still paying for a loan that we took out to expand the center, so between that and expenses, we don’t have much more.
Sister Efu says, “I would like to tell our benefactors that we are really very grateful. Benefactors do not go to mission. We go. But they are also part of this mission work by how they contribute. And especially when they contribute to a particular area they know their money goes to that. I’d like to affirm that we are partners. We are right there in a practical, concrete sense, but they are there too, because without their means, we cannot be there.”
You can bring hope to so much fear. YOUR Easter gift today; will save someone’s life.
Sister Mary Frances Kobets, M.M. focuses on Orphan Education and Agricultural Support for HIV/AIDS orphans and children at risk. There are 85 orphans in education, over 100 in agriculture, and 90 in health/hygiene/nutrition. To keep this all going is a desperate need and these orphans need your help…we need your help.
Sr. Mary Frances states, “We provide the children with teaching, agriculture, health, hygiene and nutrition.It’s a form of outreach. What is it for this child that is going to help them go to school? Is that child being taught? We canvas for school fees and levies. But are they being taught so they can pass? So we set up tutoring, so that in English, science and math the children, whatever age they are, can get what they need in those subjects. These children were on the streets and now they are with their guardians. There are quite a few boys and girls in child headed families, meaning they have to take care of themselves. They’re going to have to plant, they’re going to have to harvest and eat, and anything they have extra they sell and bring some back to us so we can give it to the children who don’t have anything.”
Sister Fran with one of the orphans in her program.
Education is very expensive and there is no consideration for the orphans, the cost is $5,000 per semester. They are charged the same as everyone else for uniforms, school fees and levies. If they can’t afford it, they can’t go to school.
Your donation today will help us provide HOPE to these orphans and others around the world. Thank you for helping us make Gods love visible worldwide.
