Born and raised in the central region of Ethiopia, in a village called Mendida, Sister Senait joined Medical Mission Sisters in 1982. She had grown up in the Eastern Orthodox Rite, and decided to become Catholic when she attended the Catholic secondary school in her village. The work of our Sisters with those made poor, and their prayer life, were 2 things that especially drew her to our Community.

Sister Senait went to college in the southern part of Ethiopia. "I studied Home Science and Technology … it's like social work," she explained. She later studied at Addis Ababa University, and earned her Bachelor's Degree in Sociology and Social Administration.

"In my first mission assignment, I worked in the Public Health Department of Attat Hospital," Sister Senait recalls. "We worked mainly with women in the villages. We organized women, and gave them education about their rights … teaching about the environment and sanitation, personal hygiene and public health, like information about communicable diseases." She was there for 5 years.

In 1999, Sister Senait began a 3-year ministry with the Urban Development Project of the Daughters of Charity as a developer for women. "We gave women basic skills business training," she explains. "They also were learning leadership skills and women's rights, to make them aware of what they can do for themselves."

AIDS and hunger have hit Ethiopia very hard, so the challenges in this area are many. Sister Senait, the first Ethiopian woman to become a Medical Mission Sister, was elected for a 3-year term as District Coordinator of Ethiopia in 2002. She describes what "healing presence" means to her: "It's to bring that compassionate love of Christ, in whatever work you do. You cannot give it a title, but maybe you are with a mother, who has a child who's dying of AIDS, or someone struggling to get a piece of daily bread, or somebody sick … we try somehow, with our faith, to be the person God wants us to be."