Carmelite sisters at the island convent in Campeche, Mexico, unpack sewing items sent Aug. 13 from Lansing and the Carmelite Nun Project. Courtesy photos
Mexican convents get help they need thanks to three Lansing women
By Mark Haney
The Catholic Times
LANSING — About 13 years ago, Gloria Sanchez-Thomas went to Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine in Mexico.
While there, she got to know some of the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine of Jesus, who have a monastery in Puebla that was founded in 1604.
That might well be the end of that story except for something that happened nearly two years ago.
“About a year and a half ago” said Sanchez-Thomas, a member of Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish, “I felt God was speaking into my heart to get a hold of the nuns at Tepeyac (another of the convents in Mexico).”
She did and the result is the Carmelite Nun project (www.carmelitenunproject.com), an ongoing effort to help Carmelite nuns at five convents in Mexico by providing such much-needed items as clothing and toiletries and, above all, sewing machines and material. That’s because the cloistered nuns make the money they need to survive by sewing for churches and by sewing scapulars that they then send all over the world.
“They were sewing all of the corporals for Our Lady of Guadalupe Basilica, which has like 30 Masses a day, on treadle sewing machines,” said Sanchez-Thomas. It was horrible.”
Sanchez-Thomas found a firm in Mussel Shoals, Ala., that will provide her with electric sewing machines at cost “because the man selling them knows they are going to the nuns,” she said. So far 10 machines have been delivered.
Carmelites at Veracruz received an electric sewing machine from the Carmelite Nun Project.
“Now they are able to sew the corporals so much quicker, with a lot of different decorative stitches, as opposed to the treadles,” Sanchez-Thomas said. “This way they can live like nuns and not feel so exhausted at the end of every day.”
This hasn’t been easy. When Sanchez-Thomas began, the nuns in Mexico were wary. She became friends with the mother superior and eventually got the nun to tell her what things they needed.
At the start the needs were simple —underwear, sandals, material for their veils, sewing supplies and electric sewing machines.
“After they started receiving scissors and sewing supplies, things they desperately needed, they were amazed at the quality that they had never had before,” said Sanchez-Thomas. “For them, sharp scissors is a luxury. And wool. And thread and basic stuff. As time went on they were confiding in me and trusting me more about helping their needs.”
Even though this began with just one convent, in Tepeyac, it was a lot for Sanchez-Thomas, a mother of two little children who works full time for the state of Michigan. So she turned to Laurene Moore, head of the IHM rosary makers group. Then they added Sue Burns, who recently retired as nurse of the Ingham County Jail.
“This whole thing was totally out of the blue,” said Moore, who also worked at the state but did not really get to know Sanchez-Thomas until the latter asked Moore for help making a 15-decade rosary for a monk in New York. “Gloria knew we made rosaries but I did not know her very well.”
Sanchez-Thomas and Burns are both third order Carmelites. Burns met Moore through Sanchez-Thomas.
“She wanted me to meet Laurene,” said Burns. “And I had to meet Laurene because I’d seen the photo of her and Gloria sending off the sewing machines with this nun project.”
So she went to Moore’s house one day.
“She’s just really inspirational,” Burns said, “and I just felt the Lord was placing it upon my heart that I needed to be involved.”
When the need for electric sewing machines came up, it meant reaching beyond the three for help. They needed money, Moore said. “so she (Sanchez-Thomas) started asking the people at work. A lot of them were non-Catholic but actually the non-Catholics did a better job of giving her money than many of the Catholics did.”
Then a doctor she knew gave up the money to buy one of the machines, so they were all set. Except they needed to come up with $100 to ship them.
Some people then learned about the effort through the lay Carmelite blog and they gave money too. One of them was a woman from Saginaw, who gave some “fairly large donations.”
“People kept coming on board,” Moore said, “and Gloria kept talking to people and we kept asking the nuns what they needed. At that end of that year, we had sent 56 boxes of stuff to that convent.”
The nuns began to open up more and offer some of their needs, which turned out to be personal hygiene items and a couple of clothes steamers, since the nuns clean the linens at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine.
Then other convents got wind of what was going on and placed their needs with the group.
“So Gloria says to me, ‘What do you think? Can we do that?,’ I said, ‘I don’t know. If the money comes in I guess we can start helping them too,” Moore said.
The needs were similar — sheets and pillowcases, sewing material, baking utensils, etc. Then the provincial contacted her and asked if they could handle helping four other convents in great need. “So now we are up to six. Well, the money still keeps coming in.”
A lay Carmelite in Indiana came through with some contributions “and bailed us out with boxes (to date they’ve shipped about 90 boxes).”
Then, around Christmas, one of the convents contacted them, saying their washing machine had broken down.
“Our mission, we felt, was just for basic needs. It wasn’t for the big stuff. So we had no idea what to do.”
They went to Fr. John Byers, their pastor, who is a big supporter of the missions.
“He said he’d give us enough money to buy two washers and a dryer,” said Moore. “So we sent the money down and they found a place that would give them the best deal and they bought the washer and dryer.”
One day the three of them got together, as they had done before, at Sanchez-Thomas’ house to make contact with one of the convents. Sanchez-Thomas, the only Spanish speaker, did all of the talking. When she was done, she was crying. The other two asked her why. She told them the mother superior had asked each nun to say something. And one of them told her, “You have no idea how long and hard mother superior has been praying for help.”
“That, to me,” said Moore, “was just an awesome confirmation that this was needed and what we were doing was on the right track.”
The nuns now are sending back scapulars, purificators and other items they make and Sanchez-Thomas is trying to sell them to local parishes and other Catholics. Whatever is raised in the sales goes right back to the convents, either in cash or in supplies.
“There are no administration costs,” said Sanchez-Thomas. “We are making sure the nuns get all of the money.”
And the money, for the most part, comes from those who have little to give.
“We get a lot of widows,” said Sanchez-Thomas. “Some people who are divorced. Some people who have struggled. They are married, single and some are on a fixed income. It is the average joe who is giving. Really it is the people who don’t have it who are giving. It is not the rich.”
“Different people give money or they want to buy something,” said Burns. “And if they don’t have money to give, they sometimes give something used. It has been just an outpouring of their hearts. It just seems the Lord touches their hearts and they want to help. People want to help. It is so beautiful.
“This isn’t coming from just us. We are not rich. And yet we are able to help the nuns because God has provided for it, He really has, through people. I think that is the biggest thing that has amazed me about this.”
All of this has happened, Moore notes, because Sanchez-Thomas felt God calling her to help the nuns she’d met more than a decade earlier, a call that came by complete surprise.
“I felt it was a lesson to all of us in the power of ‘yes,’” said Moore. “She could have said ‘no’ to that inspiration and said it was just a silly thought, but she felt it was really a call from God, that He was saying something to her that she had to act upon.
“What really gets me is that God connected them with someone who spoke fluent Spanish. How rare is that? We send rosaries all over, but we could not have communicated with them or known what to ask them.”
What the three women could not have known is how God is speaking to the nuns through them and the things they send.
“The thank-you letters they have been sending back are just heart-warming,” said Moore. “To them it is more than Christmas, it is stuff falling from heaven. Fr. John said it has reinforced their belief in Divine Providence.”
The way it has worked out and continues to work out has helped the three women at the core of the Carmelite Nun Project.
“We’re just a ragamuffin three people,” said Sanchez-Thomas. ‘This is huge. This has been eye opening for me.”
“I guess it just substantiates in my mind that God always has a plan and He is going to make it happen, even though we may not see how it is ever going to happen,” said Burns. “He puts things in place. He touches people’s hearts. He touches people’s minds. He touches people’s souls. And I think that is the most amazing part, because it takes all of those to work together. It takes everybody.”
A Carmelite nun at the Puebla, Mexico, convent unpacks some cooking supplies sent by the Carmelite Nun Project.