My Experience at Giving Voice – “The PeerSpirit Circle”
The experience I had in St. Louis Missouri, thanks to Giving Voice was simply fascinating. When I received the invitation to participate in the Circle process to strengthen our leadership as women religious, I was intrigued, but also a bit daunted, because it was in English, my second language. I accepted the invitation, and the challenge… it is my dream that one day my religious congregation will be multicultural and we will be able to welcome young women from other cultures, who speak another language in addition to Spanish; our congregation, the Guadalupana Missionaries of the Holy Spirit, was founded in Morelia, Mexico on September 15, 1930 by Father Félix de Jesús Rougier.
Our founder, who was a missionary at heart, said “You will cross borders”… this made me think that in order to achieve my dream I needed to transcend my own borders, overcome my own fears… I needed to expand my circle of relationships, relate to sisters from other congregations, cultures and languages other than my own. The adventure began, thanks to Giving Voice, where I found new insight, new ways of seeing the world and new ways of being in religious life. The PeerSpirit Circle helped me to understand that you can make your dreams come true by sharing them, because there will always be someone who is pursuing the same dreams. During the Circle process, each of us sisters had the opportunity to make our voice heard and exercise our leadership by contributing our gifts and talents for the common good, and what is most important to me, is the sense of communion I felt among all the sisters who were there from different congregations. I felt enriched by each sister’s contributions and I felt comfortable sharing my dreams and hopes with them.
This experience has opened my eyes to new perspectives in my ministry as a vocational promoter in my state in the United States. I give thanks to God and to everyone who made it possible for me to participate in such a beautiful experience. May God bless you!