Some of the Casa Community attended Fiesta DC, a festival celebrating a wide range of entertainment and food from a variety of Latin cultures.

Welcome to the FMS e-newsletter! Each week, our newsletter will be highlighting what our missioners are learning through their mission preparation at Casa San Salvador, the FMS missioner house. Enjoy these stories from the missioners' sixth week!

As the international missioners anticipate leaving their familiar life behind, it is important for them to prepare for the transitions that are about to take place in their lives. As formation has progressed, they've learned that a transition is different from a change. Unlike changes, which are external and rapid, transitions are internal and take time to unfold. The missioners' transitions are beginning now in the formation stage, and the process will continue through their journeys to their mission sites. The transition is an exciting one, but it can also seem intimidating and painful at times, so the missioners were encouraged to recognize and honor the range of emotional responses that they might experience. Additionally, missioners were prompted to compile a list of people who make up their support system. This practice helped the missioners to feel more prepared for the transition at hand.

This week, the missioners met MJ and Jerry Park from Little Friends for Peace, a group dedicated to interrupting violence and teaching the skills necessary to "prevent, resolve, and transform conflict," as their mission statement says. MJ and Jerry "motivate participants to cultivate peace in their lives and communities" by teaching a curriculum of skills for building peace. The missioners learned the importance of a strong grounding in peace at the individual level first; you can't bring peace if you don't have peace to share. They also learned the power of laughter, games, and joy in breaking down the barriers to peace, as well as the centrality of communication.

Over the past few weeks, the missioners in formation have gotten to know each other well through living in community and attending daily formation sessions together. They've also deepened their connections by sharing their faith journeys during a session called "Spiritual Lifelines." While the missioners shared their stories, their fellow missioners were encouraged to listen closely, ask clarifying questions, and share positive observations at the end. The missioners concluded each lifeline session with a prayer entrusting their lives to God. 

"This week we spent time working on a "Spiritual Lifeline" and presented it to the other OLM. This was one of my greatest challenges, and I found to be quite painful. Yet I trust this process and am allowing myself to be open to others. There are things that we share in our journey that can be helpful or comforting to each other, and if not either of those, the reflection can help keep us open to the truth."

-Susan Sarkissian

Each week the missioners will learn about different styles of prayer as part of their faith formation. We encourage you to enter into this journey; hopefully it can assist in your own spiritual life as well.

This week, the missioners returned to St. Ignatius's Examen as they continue the ever important process of discernment in this time of formation.

Watch this video to learn more about the Examen and practice the prayer for yourself!

St. Ignatius of Loyola

The Franciscan tradition is brimming with Saints, Blesseds, and Venerables included in the Roman Canon. Each week, we will highlight a different Franciscan who lived a notable life of holiness.

St. Marianne shortly before leaving for Hawaii

This week’s saint is St. Marianne Cope, born Barbara Koob. Marianne's family immigrated to the United States from Germany soon after she was born, where they lived in Utica, New York. Although she felt a call to the religious life from an early age, her father developed a disability and so after she completed eighth grade she left school to get a job in a textile factory to help support her family. Once her siblings were old enough, she then entered the novitiate of the Sisters of St. Francis, receiving the habit and religious name "Sr. Marianne" on November 19, 1862. Originally intending to teach, she instead found herself carrying out administrative roles, establishing hospitals and eventually taking a leadership role in the order. In 1883, she received a letter from the government in Hawaii asking for help managing hospitals and schools and particularly caring for patients with Hansen's disease. Marianne answered the call enthusiastically: "I am hungry for the work and I wish with all my heart to be one of the chosen ones... I am not afraid of any disease, hence, it would be my greatest delight even to minister to the abandoned "lepers'". Mother Marianne and six other sisters left for Hawaii where they took charge of the Kakaako Receiving Station outside Honolulu; they also opened a hospital and school for girls on the island of Maui. Mother Marianne cared for St. Damien DeVeuster in his last days and was chosen to take over his ministry on Molokai. Attentive to her patients' needs, she cultivated an atmosphere of beauty and pride for the people she lived in solidarity with. Mother Marianne died in 1918 of natural causes and was canonized on October 21, 2012.

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