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Praying for and visiting with the sick at home Ministering to the sick at home is one of hundreds of ways in which Medical Mission Sisters around the world try to be a healing presence to those in need today. Although she has been in mission in several cities in Venezuela; in Kokofu, Ghana; in Rome, Italy, and currently serves among the poor in Philadelphia, a big part of Sister Isidora Bollich’s heart will always belong to her native Mowata, Louisiana. A small town between Eunice and Crowley in the southwest corner of the state, Mowata is in Louisiana’s Acadia Parish amid rice fields and several oil wells. When her work as a teacher of English as a Second Language and her other ministries among seniors and parishioners of Incarnation Parish in the Olney section of Philadelphia slows down for the summer, Sister Isidora returns home to minister to old and new friends. Almost every day of her four months in Mowata, she is called upon to visit someone who is sick or to pray for a neighbor or relative who is in special need. Many with terminal illnesses request her healing presence and prayers. Sister travels happily to be with those who long for someone to pray with/for them, whether they are at home or in the hospital or in a nursing care facility.
Sister Isidora also gladly speaks to groups who request her input. Last summer she gave a special two-month course on “Interfaith Dialogue” to the women of the area. Since July she has met with a group of young girls and a parish “Come Lord Jesus Group.
While she would love to take a day or two to fish in the bayou during the summer, most “free” days she picks beans and okra in her nephew’s fields. “I’m in the garden going down very long rows,” she says, “and it is an excellent opportunity to be alone with God, contemplating Him in his beautiful creation like my patron St. Isidore did.” Now 84, Sister Isidora will celebrate the 52nd anniversary of her Profession of Vows as a Medical Mission Sister on Saturday, September 1, at her parish church, St. Lawrence. Each year, her immediate and extended family, neighbors and parishioners join her in a special Mass of Thanksgiving for her vocation and for the gift she is to so many. The church building itself holds special meaning, as it was built by her father and brothers many years ago.
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