By Mary Ellen Schoonmaker, The Record, August 25, 2005 (Used with permission, The Record, Hackensack, NJ )

I was recently one of a group of seven people from my church, Saint Anastasia’s in Teaneck, New Jersey, who traveled to Peru to support a woman from our parish who is volunteering in the Andes for a year.

Our friend, Elizabeth Larson, lives with two nuns, Sister Eileen Egan and Sister Tomasa Fernandez, in the mountain city of Sicuani. Sister Eileen, who is from Mount Holly, has worked in Peru for more than 30 years. The nuns run a small boardinghouse for girls in high school, and they’ve built six chapels in the mountains for farm families who have no way to get to church in town.

On our 10-day trip, we visited Machu Picchu, the Inca ruins, and watched a glorious sunrise over the Andes. We heard Mass in cathedrals and ornate Spanish-style churches with altars covered in gold. In Sicuani, elevation about 11,000 feet, we had lunch with the gracious bishop, Michael La Fay, O.Carm. And we visited the studio of an artist, A. Alvarez, whose statues of Mary, the mother of Jesus, we all fell in love with.

He depicts her as a Quechua mother in native dress, nursing her baby wrapped in a Peruvian blanket. The baby’s tiny hand rests on her breast, and the two gaze into each other’s eyes.

But the high point of this heartopening trip for me was a service we attended in one of the mountain chapels, said by our pastor from Saint Anastasia’s, Father Daniel O’Neill, O.Carm., who led our trip.

The Mass was in Spanish and English. Most of the songs were in Quechua. The chapel was simple: bare white walls, worn wooden floors, plain benches, a couple of statues. Outside, it was cold and raining as the church began to fill up with people who had walked long distances to get there: dusty children, shy teenagers, women in the Quechua costume of colorful skirts and sweaters or shawls. The men lined the walls, while the women, their weathered faces framed by long black braids, sat near them.

I didn’t know until later that these people see a priest only once or twice a year. Sister Eileen and Sister Tomasa, who is Peruvian and speaks Quechua, come every few weeks to distribute Communion and teach religion classes. They give out clothing and try to help with any medical problems. They preside at funerals and sometimes baptize babies.

But the presence of a priest was a rare event, and afterward almost everyone there lined up for Father Dan’s blessing. They also hugged us and thanked us for coming. We were overwhelmed by their warmth. One woman laid a purple shawl at our feet, filled with cooked potatoes, the only gift they had to give, grown on the sides of mountains where llamas and alpacas graze.

As the service was closing, a little black lamb wandered into church, crying, and was scooped up by one of the women. Both literally and figuratively, he was the perfect ending to this special Mass. Life is hard in the high Andes, and sometimes cruel. Adults and children die of things that could be treated if there was a doctor nearby, or if they could afford the ambulance to the hospital in Sicuani. Education is minimal. But there is great beauty, too: in the mountains that surround them, in the cool, clean air that smells of eucalyptus leaves, in their faces, in their music, and in their faith.

It was our privilege to meet them. And it was a privilege to meet Sister Eileen and Sister Tomasa, who minister to the people nonstop—with roosters crowing and dogs barking and their front bell ringing day and night. In the midst of great poverty, they continually accomplish small miracles. And there’s always, always much more to do.

We also have a new admiration for Elizabeth, a widow with a grown daughter who left a comfortable home in Englewood to live a life that includes sleeping in the Andean winter with no heat, walking and driving steep mountain roads, and avoiding the occasional tarantula. She’s learned enough Spanish and even some Quechua to teach Gospel study, sing in church, help the boardinghouse girls with their homework, make new friends, and visit the poor and sick.

She’s climbed dark stairs to do art therapy with a bedridden teenager, and read “The Lord is my shepherd” in Quechua to a dying man as the tears rolled down both their cheeks. She calls herself “God’s spoiled child,” because she says she has been given so much.

Our group included Father Dan O’Neill, Father Eugene Bettinger, Elena Betts, Dr. Raul Caceres, Sal D’Angelo and Bob Paladino.