Coffee house led woman to ministry of praying with the sick

- WCR photo by Alicia Ambrosio Helen Pinto found her call to pray with the sick through the vocations coffee house.

By ALICIA AMBROSIO
WCR Staff Writer
Edmonton

Helen Pinto is an active Catholic, a parishioner at St. Joseph's Basilica and an active member in the parish's young adult prayer group.

But she was still looking for something deeper. "For about three years I was searching, wandering," Pinto said of her emotional state at the time.

Through the prayer group she met parish youth minister Sister Carmen Monreal. Monreal, recognizing Pinto's yearning to find her life path, invited her to attend last year's vocation coffee house series.

Attending the coffee house series helped her focus and become aware of what she was craving. "God is love and that's what I crave. I want Jesus and God's love," she said.

Pinto remembers that during last year's coffee house series a speaker who talked about working with sick people up North touched her. "Anything with sick people touches me," she said.

Turning point

That speaker's talk was a turning point for her.

A little later, a friend whose father was dying asked Pinto to help her pray with her father. Although the circumstances were less than cheerful, Pinto said she felt joy at being able to help her friend and her dying father by praying with them. It did not end there, however.

"People would ask me to come and pray with them when someone was sick or dying," Pinto said. "I finally thought, 'Maybe God wants me here.'"

Incredibly, she was feeling joy even though she was not having an easy time. "It was a bad year. I broke my wrist, and then I was in a bad car accident and had broken bones. I was also supposed to get married and then that didn't happen.

"In the middle of all these things I felt joy praying with people who were sick and dying. It's a beautiful gift from God," she said.

Since making that discovery Pinto has committed half of every day towards praying with the sick or dying at the General Hospital. Not only does she visit the sick and pray with them, she serves as a sacristan at the chapel at the General.

Joy through service

"The fulfillment of my week is my service, I look forward to it, it gives me so much joy," she said.

Pinto recognizes that it took her a long time to finally surrender to God, to her craving for God's love, and let him take control. "I've never looked back," she said.

Her discernment, however, is not over. Although she knows that God wants her to help the sick, she doesn't yet know if he wants her to do that as a lay person, a sister, or as part of a secular institute.

In the meantime Pinto will let herself be filled with the joy she finds by praying with the sick because, "I know now where I'm supposed to be."

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