My journey started about a year ago as I began my senior year at Franciscan University. Senior year tends to mark the start of worrying about post graduation life for most college students and this was very true of my experience. The obvious choice would be to get a job and start paying off the thousands of dollars in loans I owe. That is exactly what I expected I would be doing right now a year ago. Instead I am in Stony Point, New York on retreat with the Salesians of the Province of St Phillip and will be officially commissioned as a SLM on Saturday as me and the other SLMs wrap up our three-week orientation.
In the fall of last year as I was discerning my future after graduation I was not feeling at peace with going straight into the workforce. I knew that I was feeling called to something more. This is when I began praying about doing long term mission work. I had felt this call earlier in my college years but it was more of a faint idea at that time and it moved its way to the back of my mind. Now it had come back to the forefront of my thoughts and was finally in my sights. It was something that was now becoming more of a realistic option for me as I was preparing to leave Franciscan. After praying further I knew that this was what the Lord wanted me to do with my first years out of college. I felt the call to serve Him without reserve and give myself totally to a long term mission. This desire began a new journey...the search for the right program which can be a long and frustrating process. You would be surprised with how many opportunities are out there and this made it very difficult to choose.
I knew I had to begin by narrowing it down through deciding my priorities, or what I was looking for in a program. For starters it had to be through a Catholic organization, preferably a religious order. My Catholic faith is the most important thing to me in my life and if I was going to follow Christ through serving on mission I wanted to make sure it was I would be in a formative environment where I would have access to the Sacraments and be able to live in community with religious. I also concluded that I wanted to work with children. So this ultimately brought me to the obvious choice for this criteria which is the Salesian Lay Missioners. So I applied early on in the spring, a few months before graduation, went on a discernment weekend in April, and here I am, a little over two weeks away from departing for Gumbo, South Sudan where I will be serving with the Salesians. So there you have it, that is how I became a SLM of Don Bosco following God's call to "Find Christ in the Face of a Child".
As far as orientation goes it has been an amazing experience and has really helped get me into the spirit of Don Bosco and excited to go serve the children of South Sudan. So far we spent a week in Garrison, NY at a cross cultural retreat followed by a week of serving at a Salesian summer camp and Salesian community center in Port Chester, NY. I have been blessed with being assigned to serve in Gumbo with my good friend and fellow Franciscan grad Mike Gotta and new best friend Tom Kelly who has been helping out with orientation and has been serving in South Sudan since September of last year. Well that's about it for now but stay tuned to Sabol's Salesian South Sudanese Soul Safari !
The South Sudan crew at orientation in Port Chester, New York
(from left to right: Mike, Patti, Theresa, Tom, Me, Ariel)
