Seminarians experience Christ in the City with the poor

Five Christ in the City missionaries from Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, recently joined 10 seminarians from Wichita to spread that love among the homeless in Wichita.

Michaela Fullerton, a Christ in the City missionary, said they were well-received during their three-week stay that began on May 19. “We’re very grateful to have been there and to have been able to spend time in the city of Wichita.”

The seminarians and the missionaries from Philly were in service to the poor, she said, but they also focused on community life and individual formation. “We lived together, prayed together, cooked together, cleaned together, and basically lived our whole life in common for those three weeks. – and it went well.”

The women were guests of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ motherhouse just south of Newman University in Wichita. The men stayed at a residence of the St. Joseph House of Formation, the diocesan minor seminary, on the St. Joseph Parish campus in Wichita.

The seminarians took part in various trainings during the first week, Fullerton said.

“The missionaries all gave different trainings. Some of them focused on ministry – we have street ministry training where we talk about the experience of homelessness and how we approach homelessness as a mission. We had trainings on life, the formational side of Christ in the City: a talk on personal prayer, a talk on community life, and different things like that to kind of like set the tone for the program for the three weeks.”

Fullerton said on one of the last days of their visit to Wichita she talked to women who had been interacting with some of the other missionaries.

“She shared that she had a big case management meeting and that she was at a point of a new beginning in life. She shared her faith in the Lord with us which is an experience that always impresses me to see how faithful some of our homeless are – especially noticing their circumstances in life.”

Her gratitude and the faith she had that the Lord would take care of her was inspiring, Fullerton said.
The mission of Christ in the City is to love and serve the poor, she said.

“The 10 people who are local to Wichita who joined us are still in and around the Wichita area,” she said. “When we go to places to bring this mission of bringing the love of Christ to our friends on the streets, we know that there are people still there who have grown in their love of the poor and will continue encountering the poor. We hope and pray that in our three weeks there we were able to lay the foundation for that to continue in Wichita.”