The September/October 2019 issue of Catholic Life, the magazine of the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, features a story by Kathy Flatoff on “Responding to God’s Call.”
Kathy first explored a missionary call with Maryknoll in the 1980s, after graduating from nursing school, but eventually withdrew her application.
But she recalls that “the Maryknoll mission seed had been planted. Little did I know that, 33 years later, the little seed would sprout.”
Kathy joined Maryknoll Lay Missioners in 2017 and today serves as a nurse at St. Patrick’s Dispensary, a health clinic in a poor, informal settlement in Mombasa, Kenya.
“Despite all the challenges and the things I miss,” Kathy writes, “I am unexplainably content here. I am at peace with my mission vocation that took 33 years.”
Compelled by faith to engage with people across cultures and ethnicities, Maryknoll lay missioners live, love and work with communities on the margins to promote active nonviolence and healing.
Kathy, I’m blessed to be in mission with you and concur with the unexplainable contentment in a country that is out of our comfort level.
We’re allowing God to guide and stretch us according to His will.