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Sister Pat Johannsen welcomed 2012 in
southern Sudan, the exuberance at midnight
Mass rising to a level she hadn’t seen
in church during the nine months or so
since starting her mission service in the
African country.
Singing, dancing
and clapping peppered
the New Year’s
Eve Mass, and toward
the end, many people
formed a line to dance
along the perimeter of
the seating, Sister Pat
of the Sisters of Charity
of Leavenworth said in an
email to her religious community
in Kansas.
“We got
home after
2 a.m. from
the midn
i g h t
Mass,” she
wrote. “By
6:30 a.m.,
people were
singing in
the neighborhood.”
Sister Pat, who was born in Shelby and
years ago worshiped at Shelby’s St.
William Parish, began serving in Sudan last
April. She embarked on a three-year commitment
through Solidarity With Southern
Sudan, a consortium of more than 170 religious
congregations. In some 45 years as
an SCL she focused on education, which
also is her focus in Sudan. She trains teachers.
She and other instructors have been offering
a foundation program to prepare
adults for a two-year teacher training that
starts in March. In that training, Sister Pat
will provide science instruction to people
who have never taught.
Updates on her Sudan experiences are
in emails to the SCL community and in the
fall/winter edition of the SCL magazine
Voices of Charity, which reported that
chocolate is what she misses most about
the United States. Changes in the seasons
are a close second.
In an email Jan. 1,
Sister Pat wrote that
she was gearing up
for the instruction of
teachers who will be
in training. She also
said that with no rain
since November,
there was a lot of
dust.
A few days earlier,
in her
final missive
of 2011, she
described
witnessing
the blessing
of a Catholic
radio station.
Seminarians
sang the
diocesan anthem,
Sudan’s national
anthem and
“Joy to the
World,” and
indigenous
singers and
dancers entertained
with native instruments. “They were followed
by a hip hop lip sync group,” Sister
Pat said. “What a contrast!”
Other topics covered in her emails include
events such as cooking with a charcoal
oven recently made by a welder; the
golden jubilee celebration of two sisters,
both named Bianca; and the ordinations of
five priests and a deacon, followed by a
dinner held at the bishop’s house and attended
by the governor of Western Equatoria,
one of the 10 states in South Sudan.
Sister Pat is immersed in her work, and
finds her creativity and ingenuity stretched
as she figures out how to do things with the
limited resources available, according to
Voices of Charity.
Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 28, No. 1, January 20, 2012.
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