GSR Today - The church’s missionary role is beckoning sisters from the Global South to go wherever they are called or needed. However, for missions to be successful, spiritual, human and professional formation is imperative to make the impact sustainable. Poverty can stifle the missionary impulse, but sisters in Africa are finding new ways to engage in fund raising to make their work sustainable.

Ten years after film’s premiere, Sr. Jeannine Gramick’s “journey of faith” continues - The film chronicles Gramick’s journey from quiet nun to groundbreaking advocate and minister to the Catholic gay and lesbian community, and it explores her response to her silencing by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. It returns to the festival circuit as part of Believe Out Loud’s Level Ground film festival, Nov. 14-16 in New York City. GSR sat down with director Barbara Rick to talk about the 10th anniversary edition.

“If I know so little about my family four generations ago, the assumption follows that in four generations, they will know little about me. It changes the way you think about your life.” On the first day of 2014, my dad made that comment in a casual discussion. I expect he was thinking more about wanting to be personally remembered by his descendants, but the comment resonated differently for me. Envisioning future generations dramatically reframes the question, “Is there life after death?”

"Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. . . ."

Although the flood of Central American refugee families arriving in El Paso this past summer has now dwindled to a slow but steady trickle, the local border community remains committed to raising a robust call for comprehensive immigration reform.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - More about how people choose vocations; In this clip from an episode of Ask Sister from May 2010, we respond to a listener who wonders if she can be a math professor plus a nun at the same time.

As I sat listening to Jennifer Haselberger accept FutureChurch's Fr. Louis J. Trivison Award on Sept. 19, I couldn't help but reflect how proud Father Louie would have been.

In an Inuvialuit hamlet on the Arctic Ocean in Canada's Northwest Territory, Sr. Fay Trombley has been ministering to an isolated mission of about 30 people for the past decade. After her retirement, the 74-year-old former seminary educator says she settled there not for the peace and solitude one could find in a place with only 950 people, but rather to fulfill a girlhood dream. A great deal of the pastoral care responsibilities Trombley has taken on in the last decade center on fostering hope and trust in Tuk, but her real ministry, she says, is simply being a constant, peaceful presence.

GSR Today - This week we meet a sister in Africa who fulfilled a lifelong dream by shaking “hands” with an elephant. Forgive me, but I’m just a little jealous.

I responded to the first inklings of a call to religious life as if playing the arcade game, Whac-a-mole. When God’s invitation started slowly popping up in different ways, like those little moles, I would promptly “swing my black mallet” and stuff them right back down. Eventually, the “vocation moments” were jumping up like maniacs all over the place until I couldn’t ignore them anymore. I reluctantly gave in and began to find my way through a discernment for which I didn’t quite feel prepared.