Five SLMs Commissioned for Bolivia & Mexico

By Fr. Mike Mendl, SDB

(New Rochelle, NY – August 24) – Five Salesian Lay Missioners (SLMs) were commissioned on Thursday, August 18, near the end of their retreat at Don Bosco Retreat Center in Haverstraw, NY. The retreat capped three weeks of orientation for the five; the first two weeks were based in Port Chester, NY, for introduction to Don Bosco and the Salesians, acquiring an understanding of mission, inculturation, safe environment training, necessary paperwork, and some service experiences in St. John Bosco Parish.

The orientation program was led by Adam Rudin, director of the Salesian Lay Missioners program. He was assisted by three returned SLMs: Br. Daniel Glass, SDB (2012 South Sudan), Katie Church (2018 Cambodia), and Grace Mosher (2021 Bolivia).

Paul Chappell from Maine will be assigned to Kami, Bolivia, which is near Cochabamba. The Salesians’ St. Joseph work there includes a school, parish, and social work. Paul’s actually doing his second turn in the SLM program; a good many years ago he was an SLM in Papua New Guinea. Mara Fenn from Waxhaw, NC, and Katherine Mendoza from Frisco, TX, will be posted together at Hogar Maria Auxiliadora, an orphanage in Cochabamba, Bolivia, replacing SLMs who have been there for a year. Adam Goetz from Peosta, IA, and Timothy Hughes from Carlsbad, CA, will go to the St. Dominic Savio School and youth center in Colima, Mexico, a new site for the SLM program.

The SLM retreat, as usual, coincided with an SDB retreat—about two dozen SDBs in this case. They shared prayers, meals, recreation, and conversation with the SDBs but followed their own program of spiritual exercises. Recreation with SDBs included basketball, soccer, and a strenuous six-hour hike in Bear Mountain State Park. Fr. Tim Zak, provincial, presided over the Evening Prayer service that included the commissioning rite. He introduced the service by linking our province’s sending forth missionaries to what the early Church did.

In his homily Fr. Tim first cited the Rector Major’s call for a “time for generosity” in the Congregation, specifically for missionary generosity. The Rector Major alluded to the 150th anniversary of the Salesian missions (Argentina, 1875) and to the great work that has blossomed in Northeast India since the first Salesians went there in 1906. Indians now make up 20 percent of Salesians worldwide, and they’re going out as missionaries, including to our own province. The courageous example of our first missionaries and later ones spurs us on, Fr. Tim continued. The generosity and the witness of the SLMs also encourage us in the province to carry out our own mission where we are, including supporting one another.

After receiving his or her missionary cross, each SLM made a statement of how s/he heard the missionary call and of what s/he hopes to accomplish as an SLM.

Mr. Chappell aims to grow, especially grow closer to God; and to be present to the people he’ll be with. Ms. Fenn wants to love God and know she’s loved by God, and to accompany the young girls she’ll be with on their journey to God. Mr. Goetz is seeking to live the joy of his vocation and of being a child of God, and he wants others to know that joy, as well. Mr. Hughes wants to continue saying "yes" to God in whatever way God sets before him, which now is centered on the kids of Colima. Ms. Mendoza aspires to be a faith-base for the girls in Cochabamba, revealing to them God’s fatherly love.

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