“If unity is the condition of mission, love is its essence…
The mission of the disciples and the Church as a whole is to continue the mission of Christ in the Holy Spirit:
a mission born of love, lived in love, and leading to love.”
— Pope Leo XIV, Message for World Mission Sunday, October 18, 2026 —
Dear friends,
Each October, World Mission Month calls Maryknoll Lay Missioners and those who support us to turn our attention toward the places where the work of God’s love is quietly, steadily transforming the world. Pope Leo’s message invites us to unity in that witness. Some give by going. Some go by giving. I hope you will make a gift today and go with us.
At the Huruma School in Mwanza, Tanzania, there is always a hand ready. When a child in a wheelchair needs help crossing the uneven grass, another student is already there, moving alongside. When someone new arrives and does not yet know their way, someone else walks with them. No one is asked. No one is assigned. It simply happens, again and again, in the ordinary rhythm of a day.
Maryknoll Lay Missioner Jana Schiemenz sees it every day. She came to Tanzania from Germany to accompany children with disabilities and their families in a place where they too often face rejection and misunderstanding. Started in 2004 by Maryknoll Lay Missioner Bertha Hass, the Huruma School provides free and appropriate education to children with disabilities. Jana has found a community that already knows how to care for one another, and a role not to teach them that, but to add what she can to what they are building together.
Alongside her Tanzanian colleague Salome, Jana has helped establish a handicrafts workshop for older students, teaching skills that may one day support their families. One student, Yusufu, comes to Jana after breakfast almost every morning with the same question: is there another handicrafts class today? When she gives him the key, he goes ahead with two classmates, sweeps the room, opens the curtains, and has everything ready before the others arrive. The work belongs to all of them. That is precisely the point.
Half a world away, in Bangkok, Thailand, Maryknoll Lay Missioner Gabe Hurrish has witnessed something equally moving. At a Buddhist temple in the city, an unlikely partnership has taken shape: Catholic, Buddhist, and Muslim communities have come together to house and educate seventy refugee children whose families have fled persecution from Myanmar and beyond. The children carry different languages, different traditions, different wounds. And yet inside the temple, something stronger than all of it holds them together. They have become, in Gabe’s words, one big family.
You are part of it! People choosing, in unity, to turn toward one another. Every gift to Maryknoll Lay Missioners sends you into the work alongside Jana, alongside Gabe, alongside missioners in Bolivia, El Salvador, Kenya, Brazil, Lebanon, Cambodia, and at the U.S.-Mexico border. You go by giving. And where we go together, something changes.
In hope and shared mission,
Elvira Ramirez
Executive Director
P.S. Please make your gift for World Mission Month now by clicking on the button below.
And if we may pray for you and for those you love, please add your prayer intentions here as well. Thank you!
Elvira Ramirez is Maryknoll Lay Missioners’ executive director.
