Episode One, Sister Maria Elena in Colombia

This week is our very first episode, and we’re going to start right off with a story from Sister Maria Elena. She has so many extraordinary stories that it was really hard to choose one to highlight today. She was a missionary in Colombia for many years, working with the very poorest people, helping them to connect with much needed physical resources, and also praying with them to connect them to spiritual resources. She’s still quite fluent in Spanish - in fact, if you say something she doesn’t quite hear, she’s just as likely to ask “Que?” in Spanish as to ask you to repeat yourself in English, and when she can’t think of the right word for something it’s sometimes the Spanish word that comes up first. Currently, she visits the local prison each week to conduct Bible Studies and Catholic Faith classes for the Spanish-speaking inmates there.

I sat down with her recently and asked her to tell me some stories from her time in Colombia, and ended up with 2 hours of recordings! It was really hard to choose a small segment of that interview to start us off with in this episode (and you’ll definitely be hearing more from that interview in the future!) but I think you’ll see why I started with this story, which I think comes close to capturing the amazing character that Sister Maria Elena is.