Giving Back
Medical Mission Sisters, MMS
Main site: https://www.medicalmissionsisters.org
Donation link: https://www.medicalmissionsisters.org/how-to-help/donate.html
For 25 years, I have been an active associate member of the international community of Medical Mission Sisters and Associates.
We are a community of dedicated women and men with over 500 canonical (vowed) members and 100 associates, who share our own unique expertise with disenfranchised women, children and men on five continents and in 17 countries. The community was founded in 1925 in Washington DC by a young Austrian doctor named Anna Dengel.
We are committed to promote healing and wholeness through all manner of healing ministries and in a variety of ways. We are nurses, physicians, teachers, midwives, lawyers, counselors, liturgists, community organizers, herbalists and practitioners of holistic health. Our professional and personal ministries witness to the healing presence of a compassionate God.
Thank you in advance for your caring and generous support which allows us to make a difference in the lives of thousands of people and their families, worldwide, each year.
“As MMS and Associates we stay engaged in the brokenness of our world, with profound listening to the Spirit within us, within those whom we are called to serve and within the whole of creation. We commit ourselves to focus on the potential for life in everyone and everything.” — Sister Maria Hornung”
GATE
I have traveled in six Latin America countries with GATE, Global Awareness Through Experience, since 2006. GATE is a humanitarian group which works to raise the consciousness of those in North America related to the realities and struggles of our sisters and brothers in South America.
In 2007, while traveling in El Salvador with GATE, I was presented with the opportunity to co-found a program for uplifting and developing youth, and I have been participating with youth and fund-raising ever since.
Carlos Garcia who had taught life skills to Salvadoran adults for 25 years at Equipo Maiz, had a dream to create a program to engage and inspire Salvadorian youth to become dynamic leaders. Carlos, GATE, and I co-founded the program in 2007, in honor of my dear friend, Cherie Pierson Smith. In the early years, the youth were known as “Cherie’s Kids.”
Carlos volunteers five weekends per year to gather and educate 50 plus youth. Those who are present then form youth groups in their own villages and teach those groups what they have learned. While the current groups are composed of youth 14 – 25 years of age, they then involve youth from 8 – 14 years of age for leadership skill-building, before youth fall into drug and gang activity.
Students from villages surrounding San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, have continued through these years to learn, and fill leadership roles in their communities.
We also have six students who have attended and graduated from the University of San Salvador, and there are currently six students in university majoring in areas which are benefiting ecology, agriculture, finance, and law within their country.
If you are moved to contribute to this life transforming work, please donate. Follow the link below and be sure to indicate *Youth Leadership Formation* when selecting the gift type.
On behalf of the youth and families of El Salvador, I thank you with all my heart.
Theresa
Interested in connecting with Theresa for a session? Reach out today!