Josh Sisolak and Marj Humphrey with Father Juan Zúñiga, MM after the Dec. 7 Sending Ceremony at the Maryknoll Sisters’ chapel.
“You are called to share the very movement of Jesus’ heart,” Maryknoll Father Juan Zúñiga reminded Marj Humphrey and Josh Sisolak during the Dec. 7 Maryknoll Lay Missioners ceremony that sent them forth into mission: “A heart that sees, is moved, and responds.”
“Compassion,” Father Juan noted, “compelled Jesus to act, and the same is true for missioners.”
He added, “Maryknoll lay missioners have remained faithful to that enduring mission of Jesus: A mission that meets people where they are, that seeks to heal and restore, and that proclaims the reign of God. Marj and Josh, as you follow in these footsteps, you are part of this legacy.”
We are delighted to be sending Josh and Marj into their respective missions, and we are counting on your support and prayers for their journeys.
In my own brief reflection during the Sending Ceremony, I commented on how wonderful it was to accompany Marj and Josh in this milestone of their faith journeys. I recalled two words that have similar meanings in the cultures of East Africa and Latin America: encaminar and kusindikiza.
In Spanish and Kiswahili, these words describe a human experience. When someone is leaving, the ones who remain walk with them part of the way as they depart. This experience is literal and existential — a part of the one who stays goes with you, and a part of the one who leaves remains in the heart of the one who stays. We want Josh and Marj to feel encaminados, to know tunawasindikiza.
We invite you to join us in walking with Josh and Marj in body and in spirit as they go forth to love and serve in their respective journeys to Bolivia and East Africa.
Your prayers will sustain them in the ministries they will be undertaking and the challenges they will be facing. And it is only with your financial support that Maryknoll Lay Missioners is able to send new missioners like Josh and Marj to walk and work with marginalized communities around the world.
Although Josh Sisolak, a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame, is a new missioner, he has known about Maryknoll for as long as he can remember: His father, Ed Sisolak, served as a Maryknoll lay missioner in Thailand from 1995 to 1999. And his mother, Marialuz Sisolak, was a Maryknoll staff member in the Philippines.
Growing up in Montana with classmates who were from the Crow and Northern Cheyenne tribes, he experienced different traditions and rituals and got “a glimpse into the lives of those who experience hardship and oppression,” he says. His parents “have shown me that faith is something that animates us to love and serve others, and that living in community with others is essential to loving as Christ did.”
After graduating with a degree in film, television and theater, and a minor in theology, Josh returned to his hometown of Ashland to work at St. Labre Indian School. In joining Maryknoll he is looking forward to finding “a radical way of living out the Catholic faith in today’s world.”
Marj Humphrey first joined Maryknoll Lay Missioners in 1987 and for many years served as a physician assistant in Kenya and war-torn southern Sudan. She also served as director of mission and in other leadership positions at the Maryknoll Lay Missioners office in Ossining, New York, before retiring (temporarily) in 2022.
Humphrey’s vocation as a missioner emerged during her years at a Catholic Worker house of hospitality in New York City, from 1976 to 1984. It was during this time that she got to know Dorothy Day and served as the editor of the Catholic Worker newspaper.
Her ministry this time will be different from the healthcare service she provided before, but it will still be a healing ministry. She plans to begin her new work in East Africa in restorative justice in Uganda before eventually returning to work in Kitale, Kenya.
Please keep Josh and Marj and their communities in your prayers, as they endeavor to serve with a heart like Jesus’.
In hope and shared purpose,
Elvira Ramírez
Executive Director
P.S. Through our acts of compassion and charity, patience and partnership, we do not only transform the world. We transform ourselves. I wish you abundant blessings for this new year, and thank you for your generosity. Together with Marj and Josh, and all our missioners around the world, let us renew our own mission! Thank you!
Elvira Ramirez is Maryknoll Lay Missioners’ executive director.
