Lay missioners: A time to serve
By Susan Brinkmann
CS&T Correspondent
For Ellen O’Connell, life in the missions started in a high school cafeteria, where students were throwing away their lunches so they could buy cafeteria food.
“I decided I was not going to let that food be thrown away,” said O’Connell, 38, of Drexel Hill, a member of the Maryknoll Lay Missioners.
“I put boxes next to the trash cans asking, ‘If you have a half-sandwich or an apple or something, please be kind enough to share it with someone else.’ Every day, I collected it and distributed it to places like St. John’s Hospice.”
O’Connell, who was born and raised in Upper Darby, said that experience at Archbishop Prendergast High School was one of several that brought home to her the meaning of the teachings of Jesus Christ to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick— awareness that eventually led her into full-blown missionary work with Maryknoll.
“When you have that awareness, and you start to connect the dots with how behavior in one place affects others, you realize … ‘It all starts with me. It has to start with me.”
O’Connell, who will be speaking at St. James Parish in Elkins Park on World Mission Sunday, attended college at Loyola University in Maryland, St. Joseph’s University, and American University, where she earned a graduate degree in mathematics and secondary education.
She began her life in mission work as a volunteer for the Vincentian Service Corps in Washington, D.C., and the Catholic Network of Volunteer Service.
“That’s when I began to blossom into an even greater awareness of people in other countries outside the U.S..” she said.
That was also where she first heard about the Maryknoll Lay Missioners (MKLM).
The program was started by the Maryknoll Fathers 30 years ago. Since then, it has become a separate entity, training more than 550 lay men and women for missionary work in every corner of the globe.
Men, women, and families can serve as lay missioners after attending a 13-week training program at Maryknoll headquarters in New York. They sign on three-year stints.
A year after she married Timothy O’Connell in 1998, the couple decided to join Maryknoll as lay missioners.
They were sent to El Salvador: “Three days before we arrived, an earthquake struck the country, so we were thrust into working in any way we could to help the people recover,” she said.
That meant “providing food, visiting, listening to people who needed to share their stories,” O’Connell said. “A month later we had another significant tremor and it was quite fearful. It was already a place of real instability — political and economic — and when you add the earth moving and shaking, it compounds everything.”
The O’Connells settled into serving the community in San Ramon, a suburb of the capital city of San Salvador. Ellen O’Connell connected with a community center and began computer-training classes for the residents.
“I was able to secure very old PCs and Microsoft Windows software, and started training everyone on Windows. I taught several classes during the day, in the evening and on weekends. I also did one-on-one math tutoring,” she said.
The O’Connells returned to the United States in 2003. They have two sons, Devin, 5, and Daniel, 2. Timothy O’Connell works for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia as a pastoral agent for the Hispanic Ministry Team of Delaware County. She is on the staff of the Maryknoll Lay Missioners, serving as the U.S. Church relations manager.
“The biggest piece of my work is interfacing with mission offices in all the dioceses and archdioceses throughout the country, offering our services to them in any way that helps them promote mission,” she said. She also speaks at parishes on behalf of the missioners.
“My main message is one of gratitude for all of the years that people have been continuing to support World Mission Sunday, to share my experience in mission, and to call others to serve,” O’Connell said. “I like to tell people that I’m not very different from any of them.”
In fact, O’Connell said, one entire family from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, — Denis and Kate Callahan and their two young sons, Benjamin and Noah — who are now training for a three-year stint in Bolivia beginning in January. Denis and Kate Callahan will speak at Presentation B.V.M. parish in Wynnewood on World Mission Sunday.
As for O’Connell, she says she’s a product of her mission experience: “It has rooted me in the great importance of Jesus’ teaching, and how to love day-to-day, to deal with the pain of life, to know that love is painful, but it’s not a time to abandon. It’s a time to ‘be with’ — to be present.”
For more information about MKLM, visit the Web site at www.mklm.org or leave a message for Ellen O’Connell at 800-867-2980.
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