When two Daughters of Charity arrived in Magadan, Russia, Aug. 6 to establish a community of sisters in the Far East Russian city, they took with them a desire to serve the poor that requires flexibility and an ability to listen to the needs of the people they are called to serve.
It’s a concept of missionary work that Sister Jean Marie Williams, an Anchorage-based Daughter of Charity, said has been nurtured by years of preparation and the experiences of other missionaries.
Sister Williams moved to Anchorage from Indiana three years ago to be a part of the first Daughters of Charity community in Magadan. She began by helping to coordinate the Anchorage Archdiocese’s support for the Church of the Nativity of Jesus Christ in Magadan while brushing up on her Russian-language skills.
Since then she’s visited Magadan five times, forging relationships with parishioners and the two American priests ministering there, Fathers Michael Shields of Anchorage and David Means of St. Louis, Mo.
Fellow Daughter of Charity Sister Pacita Calica accompanied Sister Williams to Magadan this month and will serve as a companion to her until October, when three Polish Daughters of Charity are expected to arrive for long-term assignments. The Poles speak Russian, as does Sister Williams; Sister Calica does not.
The Magadan Daughters of Charity community will be the second of the order’s missions in Russia. A Slovenian province operates a Daughters of Charity community in Nizhni Tagil, far west of Magadan near the Ural Mountains.
Sister Williams said just before her Aug. 5 departure for Magadan that the community is entering this new mission with “no preconceived notions.”
Magadan, she said, “is just a powerful place to be. The people in the church are so prayerful and so full of faith. I’m all prepared to just go there, learn from them and let them tell us what they need.”
Last winter, Sister Williams attended a monthlong preparation for missionary work offered by Maryknoll missioners that she said helped participants realize that they’re “entering holy ground” in their overseas ministries.
“We’re not there to proselytize. We’re not there to take believers away from the Russian Orthodox Church,” Sister Williams said. “Our charism is the service of Jesus Christ in the poor. It doesn’t matter what faith they have or don’t have.”
On initial trips to Magadan, Sister Williams and other Daughters of Charity had the “thinking of an American,” hoping to fix a problem, she said. But as preparations continued for establishing a community there, she said, that attitude began to change.
There is no pre-set agenda for the precise kind of work the women will be doing in Magadan, but it will fit into the fourth vow (after chastity, obedience and poverty) that they take as Daughters of Charity: service to the poor.
Sister Williams said the community’s work ministry will depend on “who the sisters are, what gifts they bring and … what it looks like the needs are.”
Sister Williams said the group may begin by visiting elderly Nativity of Jesus parishioners in their homes, including survivors of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet slave-labor camps, known locally in Magadan as “the repressed.”
Magadan served as a staging area for the gulags, and an estimated 2 million prisoners died in the region before the rest were freed in the 1950s. The parish has established relationships with about 100 survivors, some of whom Sister Williams has also come to know over the past few years.
Father Shields, the Anchorage Archdiocese priest who has served as pastor of the Nativity of Jesus Parish since 1994, said the establishment of a Daughters of Charity community there is an answer to his prayers.
Some of his older parishioners are suffering with the loss of pensions and drug prescriptions once covered by the Russian government. The poverty is severe; for years, the parish has grown potatoes for the hungry.
“I am very excited to work with them (Daughters of Charity) as they have such a vast experience with the poor,” Father Shields told the Anchor in an e-mail interview. “Once I met the Daughters and saw how they immediately greeted the people, visited homes, I knew they were called here. The sisters fit like, as they say, a glove.”
Sister Williams also hopes to minister to people in Ola, a small village about 25 miles outside of Magadan where American Father David Means celebrates Mass for a group of people, including up to 40 children, in a renovated apartment.
The rate of unemployment in Ola skyrocketed after the Soviet Union dissolved and factories there shut down. Alcoholism, domestic violence, child neglect and poverty are “rampant” in Ola, where many survive off the fish they catch in summer and government aid in winter, Sister Williams said.
Before Sister Williams became a Daughter of Charity, she analyzed information for the U.S. Air Force as a linguist during the Cold War. She said the Russian speakers she worked with talked about their homeland with passion and reverence and “such depth of soul” that she soon realized “the people of a country are much more than their governments.”
She said she was happy to put her Russian degree to use again as a Daughter of Charity.
Her temporary companion, Sister Calica, has been a schoolteacher and an assistant principal.
She said her role personally supporting Sister Williams in the initial stages of the community’s establishment in Magadan is part of a tradition that goes back to the founding of the Daughters of Charity, when women were sent “two at a time” to minister to the poor.
“Nobody goes by herself,” Sister Calica said. The support of another Daughter of Charity committed to the same vision “will make you stronger for the mission.”
“We have our nourishment to do our service through our community life and prayer. Without that, it’s just a job, not really a mission of service,” Sister Calica said.
Sister Williams will return to the United States annually to renew her visa.
