New Orleans made me a missionary deacon

Think of your own history when you pray, and there you will find much mercy. This will also increase your awareness that the Lord is ever mindful of you; he never forgets you. So it makes sense to ask him to shed light on the smallest details of your life, for he sees them all.

Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, 153

I am in New Orleans, Louisiana, this week for the US National Diaconate Congress.

The last time I was here was in March 2007, just months before moving to Honduras as a lay missionary with the diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán.

I had come to New Orleans for the first time in March 2006 with a group from St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames, where I served as a lay campus minister. We were part of thousands who had come to respond to Hurricane Katrina.

That first visit changed my life and opened up my move to Honduras in June 2017 and my ordination as a permanent deacon in July 2016.

A passionate university student, Nathan Stein, had urged me to organize a group to New Orleans and helped me carry this out. While there we gutted three houses.

The second house belonged to an African-American woman, Sharon, who had raised her children and grandchildren in that house. She joined us that day and prayed with us before we began.

She stayed as we carried out the ruins of her house. But what moved me was her serenity. She moved my soul.

That night we reflected on the day and some students wondered how they would feel if all their possessions were ruined and were carried out of the house to the dump. I began to think about all I had accumulated and wondered what would people have to do with them after my death.

I soon began to think that maybe I was called to do something different, to even move on from my ministry at St. Thomas. Was I being called to something MORE?

Those reflections, stirred by a woman named Sharon, led me to Honduras. Years later, Bishop Darwin Andino asked me to consider the permanent diaconate, confirming my call to serve, with the grace of the sacrament of orders.

And so I am here today in New Orleans for a convention of deacons, grateful to God, who called me to move on – in the encounter with an African-American woman in hurricane devastated New Orleans.

Grace is everywhere, if we have the heart to recognize God’s presence in the smallest details of our lives.