We Are Grateful for Friends Like You

During this last year, the Lord helped us to learn a great deal about friendship and the beauty of relationships that bloom from the experience of serving God together. Doing street ministry in Portland with the Urban Missionaries taught us how deep friendships can develop far more quickly when we take risks in God to serve the most vulnerable. The camaraderie and laughter we experienced amid the difficulty, pain, and hardship we encountered in the people living on the streets of Portland taught us that sometimes the most valuable friendships are found in unexpected places.

In The Four Loves, CS Lewis writes that “few value [friendship] because few experience it.” With the advent of digital technology, perhaps this is even more true. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle saw living together as an ideal for friendship so highly mediated online relationships, being far from the incarnational reality of living together, can make it difficult to find real friendship online. 

Difficult but not impossible. 

As we have embarked on this adventure of following God’s call to a new mission, many of our biggest supporters have been people we knew first through social media. We cannot express how much we appreciate the friends who have walked with us in this journey.

We also have found true friends in many of you. Simply by speaking about the work to which God is calling us, we have connected with many people who work tirelessly inside and outside of the Church to support abuse victims. Survivors also have reached out to us as well as many people who simply see the need for our mission. The enthusiastic response from people throughout the world has been one of the strongest signs to us of God’s continued desire for this mission in the Church.

Last month, we told you the exciting news that we will be going to Rome to study safeguarding, or abuse prevention, at the Gregorian. We had hoped to begin fundraising for this big trip earlier but our circumstances led to the need to ask for your help at the eleventh hour.

We needed your financial support to make this step—and your response has been more generous than we ever expected. Of the $28,000 we need to raise, we have already raised almost $21,000! Many of you even chose to support us monthly, which helps us a great deal with our financial planning. (If you would like to help us reach our goal, you can learn more at the bottom of this post.)

We depart for Rome today, (in fact, we are working on this post from the airport.) As we are able, we promise to keep you updated on our adventures and studies in Rome. In the meantime, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for making this much-needed work possible with your prayers and financial support. 

We are grateful to have friends like you on this journey.

Ways to Help Us Reach Our Goal:

• Make a one-time OR recurring monthly donation through Square

• Make a one-time donation through Zelle or Venmo

• Mail a check payable to ”Sisters of the Little Way” to:

  • US Bank

    c/o Sisters of the Little Way

    NW Oak Way

    Banks, OR 97106

• Help with items for our trip on our Amazon list