Patron Saints for Mission

God has given us a number of great role models. Many of these role models are canonized saints who have lived their lives faithfully to the Lord. You can see through their lives of the great love they had for the Lord by the way they lived out their lives. Sometimes I find it difficult to pray or have times when my prayer is just plain old dry because of stress. Those are the times when I ask the Saints to pray for me because I know they can pray better for me than I can when I'm not in a prayerful state of mind. I also ask for their intercessions when I feel that they can relate to my life experiences. In certain prayer requests, they know what I need and they can go to God for me. For my mission I have chosen two Saints that I can remind myself to look up to when I need help.

Saint John Bosco was a Catholic Italian priest and is the Founder of the Salesian Holy Order. If it were not for this Holy man, I would not be serving in Okinawa, Bolivia and getting to know the people there. It is amazing how someone who was born 200 years ago can have an effect on me. He certainly had a gift with bringing poor and neglected boys to Christ when he was alive. He dedicated his life to the betterment and education of the street children and delinquents. Every Oratory of his had a playground for the kids to play, a church to pray and worship at, a school to learn, and a home to be sheltered. He developed teaching methods based on love and kindness rather than punishment. Don Bosco teaches me that love, patience, and having trust in God can be very fruitful to me and those I encounter in the long term.  

Mary the Mother of God is the perfect Christian of all time. She is God’s dream come true. Saint Don Bosco had a special devotion to Mary and she actually appeared to him in a dream at the age of 9 to reveal God’s plan for him. From my own experiences, Mary has been so good to me and my loved ones. I love asking for her to talk God for me whenever I need something because she knows God the best. I was born on a special Marian feast, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Dec 12th. This is the day when we remember the time when the Virgin Mary had appeared to Juan Diego in 1531 in Mexico. In the visitations, she appeared to him in clothes of that time and culture. She spoke to him in their native language and in loving ways that he could understand. She met him where he was at on the countryside. After the apparition of the Virgin Mother in Mexico, there was a large movement of people from the Americas into the Catholic Church.  The Blessed Mother teaches me that I must learn about the people I’m visiting; learn their language, learn about their lives and culture before I point them to Jesus. She is the Patron Saint of the Americas and will be a special patron for me on mission.