Christ Forms a Family in Loving Friendship

My husband Miguel and I began our journey with FMC in dramatically different ways.

As a Ecuadorian, Miguel encountered the lay mission life through the witness of single missionaries from FMC who lived with his family in Ecuador and served their community. This witness resulted in his conversion and discernment of God’s call for him to serve as a missionary. In 2015, he began his journey with FMC as an associate missionary in Peru until he
could attend a 6-week-long Spanish Intake (missionary training) in 2018.

My own call to missions was more conventional: finding FMC online, attending a discernment week, and going through the three-month Intake in 2017, before living on mission in Peru in early 2018.

My husband and I met as singles in Peru and eventually fell in love. On August 23, 2019, we were married in Peru surrounded by the poor, a handful of family members and friends and our fellow missionaries. Our time living and working with singles and families prepared us for our life together on mission. This is something we are so grateful for.

We served in Peru for just over three years as a married couple, welcoming our first child, Violeta, and watching the Lord move in our ministry and family life. We’ve watched missionaries come and go from the field, and truly heard the Lord ask us to make that place our home. When the time came for us to discern next steps for our family, we found ourselves working
towards permanent residence for Miguel in the USA. This led to our recent move to the FMC home base at Big Woods Mission in Louisiana.

Leaving Peru was one of the hardest and most painful goodbyes. Those who have experienced the glory and sacrifice of mission life can understand what I mean by this. For me, it was hard to imagine a better life for myself or my family, but we still discerned God was leading us out. The image we received in prayer led us to believe that God still wanted us working in
the vineyard of foreign mission, but in a different way.

Since May, Miguel has been serving our FMC campus as the grounds and maintenance manager. When the invitation to serve on the formation team for Intake 2023 was presented to us, we believed God was showing us a way forward in mission for our whole family.

Our involvement with Intake typically goes from 9:30 in the morning until just after lunch. The days vary, but typically, there is a teaching, outreach, workshop or study to begin, quiet reflection, small-group discussion, and lunch together. In the afternoons, Miguel returns to work on the grounds.

Intake certainly looks different than our experiences of it years ago. The most significant difference is the lengthening of formation to six months. This allows for additional tools and training to help missionaries have healthy transitions into the foreign field. Some of these include Evangelical Catholic’s Reach More discipleship program, risk assessment training, and
workshops to discuss how to communicate and work well with clergy and teammates.

We are most looking forward to serving, sharing our experience and learning alongside Luciana, Madeleine, and the Daigle family, as well as the rest of the formation team. We hope to be a support for them as they follow God’s call to serve in the foreign mission field. Please keep us all in your prayers, especially for Holy Spirit-led immersion in General Cepeda, Mexico
during November.