VIRIDITAS: SOUL GREENING
I grew up on a sugar plantation, the Nisshi camp in Waipahu, the seventh of 10 children. During the summer we worked in the cane or pineapple fields, and in the cannery. It was a lot of hard work, but we enjoyed it. Whatever we earned helped our poor family. I knew my family couldn’t afford to send me to college. So after graduating from Waipahu High School, I took the opportunity to go with a Navy family to Texas to care for their little children. That was my opportunity to leave the plantation and explore beyond.
The Truxlers of Corpus Christi, Texas, were a very devout Catholic family. It was through their fine example that they became my godparents, and I became a Catholic. It was also in church there that I saw the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament Sisters. God had plans. I don’t know why he picked me among the thousands and thousands of people to serve him. I didn’t think this was possible.
When the priest instructing me in the faith asked me if I was considering to become a nun, I responded, “Impossible.” But he said, “With God all things are possible.” That played on my mind. As I said my rosary while riding the bus, his words began to overcome me. What was impossible became my “Yes.” It is a strange twist for a Buddhist to become a Catholic to become a nun. Whenever my classmates ask me what happened, I say that God just took over my life, and his grace has sustained me thus far.
At one point, I did look at the Maryknoll Sisters thinking that I could end up in Hawaii. But my reasons were selfish and it was not meant to be. I stayed in Corpus Christi and worked in the Diocese of Brownsville for 47 years. For over 40 of those years I was the principal and a teacher at the same time, at the Incarnate Word Academy. It is through the support of my sisters in community that I have found my sustenance in serving the poorest of the poor and enduring in all the other activities I engaged in. I also find strength in this little prayer, “Jesus, you are my Savior, you are my love. Help me.”
After I left the school system, I went to our House of Prayer. It was there that I worked in the yard, cooked, cleaned and did many other things. One day as I sat on the floor in the chapel, I prayed: “Lord, you know this is crazy. Here I am. Lead me. Show me what you want. Here are my hands, take me.” It was after that, without my realizing it, that I went to a health institute gathering in Corpus Christi and met a little lady who was doing reflexology. So, I took courses in that and in massage therapy. Since then I have been working on so many people from all walks of life, the young and old. This gave me new life. This has been my life after I left Waipahu High School.
Sister Mary Vianney Uyeno is a Sister of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament in Brownsville, Texas. She entered the convent in 1952 and just made her 60th year of profession.
