The Sisters Corner

Time Flies!!! My time in Tempe has come to an end. As many of you know, I came to Arizona in order to prepare for my formayion as a Servant. It has been almost two months since I arrived to the sunny desert. Now I get to continue to the next step and move to the forma!on house in Peru. I am very excited for this new phase where I will be able to continue answering the Lord’s calling to serve him.

The time with the Sisters has been above and beyond. I have learned a lot about what it means to give your life to God, to give your everything to the service of others, but also, to see what it means to do so as a Servant of the Plan of God.

It is so wonderful to see the variety of ministries that we have at OLMC. God has blessed our parish with people that have so many different gifts and talents. Next weekend God is asking us to put them in service to others.

Why do I need to volunteer? - you may be wondering.

When we encounter God, we discover the necessity of communicating his love to others. God’s love can’t stay in one person only, God’s love desires to dwell in the hearts of all men. These other people we can communicate his love can be our closer relatives, parents, children, and even people we’ve never met before! The people we serve in the different ministries, are not strangers. They are our brothers and sisters in Christ and we are called to help them in their journey of faith.

For those of us who form part of the RCIA team or have the blessing to serve as a sponsor, it is a beautiful experience witnessing how God has a very special way of calling His sons and daughters to grow closer to Him. It is always special to see how the Lord knocks on their door in so many different ways, and how they willingly answer to Him.

A couple of weeks ago we kicked off this year’s RCIA program with a retreat where we reflected on the gift of Faith. A gift that God gives to us that requires an answer to Him. And we can truly see how this is happening in their lives now. This Sunday during the 9am Mass we celebrated the Rite of Welcoming and Acceptance for catechumens and candidates who have signed up in the RCIA program with the desire to learn more about the Catholic faith and grow closer to Jesus. This rite is important for us, as a community, to welcome them as they officially start this journey to prepare themselves to, with the grace of God, join the Catholic faith during the Easter Vigil.

Our charism and mission as Servants of the Plan of God is to serve and announce God to everybody, especially to those who are most in need. This week we celebrated our 15th anniversary in the country of Ecuador. One of the main missions of the Sisters there is to serve in the Jacinta and Francisco Center which gives integral education from the Catholic faith for women with intellectual disabilities. We provide training to enhance their skills and abilities and we also seek to help to achieve adequate social and work integration. We offer therapy services, counseling, integral formation, art workshops, Christian and moral training and various job-training workshops. Celebrating 15 years of service at this mission that brought us to Ecuador has been very special for us as the sisters who live there have been sharing videos and photos of the celebrations they have been having. Please pray for our Sisters in Ecuador and Peru who serve in this two very beautiful missions so that they continue to give themselves joyfully in the service of these children and women who are among the favorites of our Lord Jesus.

We are all well aware of the migration situation we have in the USA, we would have to be blind and deaf not to know it is a big problem. It is a topic that appears again and again in the news, one that usually turns political. But, our experience as Sisters is that when we talk with people about it, we are surprised to see that many are not aware of the humanitarian crisis that has been taking place so near to our homes.

The situation is shifting all the time, in the last year we have had a huge influx of Asylum Seekers in Arizona that needed to be fed, clothed and cared for. Now they are being retained for months in shelters across the border that don’t have enough resources to feed them. These are people in need who are around us, or very near to us, who really need our help and as Christians we don’t want to ignore them.

This Sunday’s Gospel invites us to carry our cross and to renounce to all of that we possess in order to be Jesus’s disciples. It also talks about hating our own father, mother, wife, children, brethren, sisters. Does that mean that he doesn’t want us to have possessions? Does this Gospel teach that we have to love suffering or even to hate our life and our family? Of course not!

If we don’t understand this Gospel from the message of love that Christ teaches us, we might get everything upside down. God loves us and wants us to love each other. He wants our happiness and our wellbeing, and there is nothing wrong in having possessions to fulfill whatever material needs that we might have. But, He does not want us to place our value and happiness on the possessions of material beings, He would rather have us give them away if they stop us from loving Him.

As we have shared with you before, Anna Carochi who is originally from Denver, and who was living with us in Arizona for the past year went to Peru in July to start her formation in order to become a sister in our community. What you might not know is that she is the first girl from the United States to join our community. It brings us a lot of joy to see how our charism, which started in Peru in 1998 and has been growing for a number of years in South America, is now also represented by someone from this beautiful country where we enjoy serving so much.

There are seven girls starting their formation this year and for us it is very exciting to see us grow not only in number but in a very particular way. Besides having the first girl from the USA, we also have the first vocation from Mexico and the first one from Panama. They are joined by another girl from Ecuador and three Peruvian girls.

Hi there! My name is Dulce. I am originally from Mexico, born and raised there up until 2014 when I moved to Chicago (IL), alongside my family. I am very excited that now I got to move to Tempe in order to live with the community as preparation for my formation as a Servant of the Plan of God.

Back in 2016, I began wondering about my vocation in life, and so I asked the Lord for an answer. When I first met the Sisters, in that same year, I knew deep in my heart that they were what I was longing for. Although I felt called to discern with them, it was not until 2018 that I became a candidate. Last June I traveled to Peru for the communitarian experience. There, the Lord confirmed to me that He has called me to serve Him as a Servant. I am very grateful to Him for His invitation to follow Him for the rest of my life. Thank you all! Be sure that I keep you in my prayers.

As we shared with you last week, this past August 15th, Solemnity of the Assumption of Our Lady, we celebrated our 21st anniversary of foundation. And the joy of our celebration was augmented with the news of the new community God has recently shown us that He wants us to open in a small rural town in Ancash, Peru. We feel very grateful to receive this calling from God to expand the mission in the Andes region of South America.

Last week four of the five sisters who will start this new community have gone for a mission trip there to get to know the area and start preparing everything for this new missionary community which will open up in the beginning of next year. This will be the third community we have in Peru in a rural area and it makes us very happy to be able to extend our apostolate among the neediest in Peru.

During this week we want to ask for special prayers for the Servants of the Plan of God around the world. August 15th, Solemnity of the Assumption of Our Lady, it is going to be 21 years since our community began in Lima, Peru when 9 young women moved in together to start the formation process to discern if God was calling them to give their lives to Him through this new community which was starting.

Two decades later, we now have more than 160 sisters in 14 communities around the world and we are preparing to open the 15th community in a rural area of the mountains of Peru. For those of us who have been around for a while it is truly amazing to look back and see how God has lead us and taken us places we had never dreamed.

God invites us to announce Him and spread His Gospel to everyone. One of the missions we are grateful about is to serve in our Parish’s School. It is such a blessing and a great mission to be able to help the children encounter Christ, allow them to know and live their faith. For us, there is such a great joy knowing that through this service, we equip the children with not only information but with wisdom that allows them to live a life rooted on our faith’s teachings and values.

We want to share words from Benedict XVI about Educating: