Intercom Features

Charity Hospitality
By Donata Glassmeyer

Korean born S. Yoonmi Kim remembers her first days on the third floor of Seton Hall at the Sisters of Charity Motherhouse. “I came to the U.S. to begin a study program at the College of Mount St. Joseph [ Cincinnati, Ohio],” she said. “When I came here, I knew no one.” After eight months living with the Sisters, however, those words are just a memory. S. Yoonmi is a grateful recipient of the legendary history of hospitality at the Motherhouse.

S. Yoonmi Kim (right) enjoys a meal and conservation with S. Joyce Brehm in the Dining Room of the Sisters of Charity Motherhouse in Mount St. Joseph. S. Yoonmi has been enjoying the SC hospitality for the past nine months while earning a bachelor’s degree from the College of Mount St. Joseph.

S. Yoonmi, whose name means “truth and beauty,” is a missionary sister of St. Columban based in Wicklow County, Ireland, but Sister’s Central House in the U.S. is in Silvercreek, N.Y., near Buffalo. She spent the last six years on mission in Ayacucho, Peru, deep in the Andes Mountains where S. Yoonmi worked with children and youth in many rural villages preparing them in faith formation and for First Communion. She came to the U.S. in July 2008 to begin a bachelor’s degree program in religious pastoral ministry at the College.

Even with three languages to her credit (Korean, Spanish and the Incan Quechua), English, especially idiomatic phrasing, is difficult to learn.

“When I came to the Motherhouse, the Sisters taught me so many new ways to learn English, especially the idioms,” she said. “My community is very international. Here at the Motherhouse almost everyone is American. All the Sisters are teaching me. It is a learning experience. I am learning different ways to live, laugh and talk!

“The food is very good here, but when I feel tired, I miss my mother’s food.” Recently Sisters treated S. Yoonmi to dinner at the Riverside Korean Restaurant in Covington, Ky., where she enjoyed, “a typical Korean meal called bibimbap, steamed rice with many vegetables.”

Even with language and food differences, S. Yoonmi said, “I feel very much at home in the Motherhouse. I really admire the Sisters spirit of welcoming, hospitality and concern for an ‘outsider’ like me. This is a very pleasant community.”

Add her studies at the College into the language and food mix and S. Yoonmi is experiencing a global cultural immersion of considerable proportion. She is reading W.E.B. DuBois in her African-American literature class and studying Appalachian culture and spirituality, as well.

“I go for a walk for fun,” she said. “I listen to songs in different languages and sometimes I dance. I learned a lot about dancing in Peru because on every occasion you have to dance in order to live with the people. They can dance all night.

“In Ayacucho, the small village where I lived, there are no TV channels or phones. People are still suffering the effects of more than 20 years of terrorism – lost loved ones, poverty and continued violence. Being with the people, helping the children, listening to the problems in their lives was very satisfying for me.

“When I came to the Motherhouse I expected only lodging and meals, but what I have received here is much more. I have a caring community of Sisters. I have friendship. I feel safe and connected. In addition, I enjoy the best tutoring for my studies! Thank you, Sisters. You are really ‘Charity’ Sisters.”

 

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