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Sr. Donna
M. Williams, SLW
I remember
one night as I was shelling corn in the granary. The thought
came to me that I was going to be a missionary. That moment has
stayed with me through my many years of ministry as a woman
religious.
My first
experience of educational poverty took place in the housing
projects in St. Louis, Missouri. A grandmother could not read
or write her name. I am not sure if this experience helped to
set my course or not. But, at some point, I realized I wanted
to work with the financially poor and those who struggled with
their schoolwork.
My thoughts,
prompted by conversations with missionaries to Mexico, went back
to that night in the granary. I felt drawn to overseas
ministry. I wanted this as much for myself as I did for my
community. An August day saw me boarding a plane for Hawaii and
then on to the Marshall Islands. They had just gained their
independence in 1986, the year before I arrived. They were
going through the pangs of change just as the SLW had done ten
years previously. I spent three years on a coral atoll thirty
miles long and a quarter mile wide. I worked in the parish
school and in the junior college, which trained teachers and
nurses for the thousands of tiny atolls scattered over thousands
of miles throughout the central Pacific.
My work
now in the inner city high school in Chicago is a culmination
experience. All my years of work in the United States and in
the Marshalls serve me well to work with my students. I love
what I am doing as I work with students on an individual basis.
It is the best of both worlds—my world as educator and my role
as missionary.
Mission Experience
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