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The thrift shop at Holy Family parish in downtown Albany was busy one recent Thursday, as a line of people waited five deep and browsers were searching through racks filled with colorful clothing.

Some workers would find a situation like this daunting. Maeve Smith just smiled as she bagged a black-and-white stuffed animal for a customer.

"Are you new?" she asked the woman. "It's nice to see you."

LAMP-light
Mrs. Smith is spending a year at Holy Family as a LAMP (Lay Apostolic Ministries with the Poor) missionary.

Part of a private, lay-run organization based in the Bronx, LAMP sends volunteers to work in such places as parishes, homeless shelters, thrift shops and soup kitchens.

The directors of the organization arranged for Mrs. Smith to serve in Albany starting in December. She is the first LAMP missionary to work outside of the New York City area.

Decision
In 1999, Mrs. Smith was thinking of joining the Peace Corps when she spotted a brochure about the Salesian missionaries at her parish, St. John the Evangelist Church in Schenectady. Their "different" job description appealed to her.

The program "was flexible, and they said they wanted people with a sense of humor. All of a sudden, I felt that God was steering me," she explained.

When she went to Loma Alta, Bolivia, with Salesian missionaries to teach English in grades 6-12, she could not speak a word of Spanish, but she eventually learned through interaction with the people she served: her students, a parenting group and a youth group.

Bolivian lessons
Mrs. Smith came to admire the Bolivians' community spirituality.

"In Bolivia, you'd really act out your faith," she explained. "You'd go through the town in a procession, with a nun with a megaphone singing hymns, and we'd be singing with them."

People in Loma Alta, located in a rural part of the country, saw a priest for Mass once every two to four weeks, depending on the weather. Nevertheless, she said, the village would come to church every week, even for a communion service.

Bolivia was "where my faith was starting to come together," she said.

Loving God
Mrs. Smith returned to the U.S. and worked at a Salesian Marian shrine in East Haverstraw, N.Y., where she ran youth retreats and started thinking about a call to religious life.

"You come back so fired up," she said. "All of a sudden, you're so in love with God. You want to give your life to God."

Searching for a niche in the Church, she worked for a pro-life organization and met the reason she wasn't connecting with a religious order: Glenn Smith, whom she met at a pro-life prayer service and married last year.

A LAMP missionary himself at one time, he introduced the concept to her.

Busy time
Mrs. Smith receives a small stipend from LAMP for her work at Holy Family, work that includes helping out at the thrift shop and food pantry, conducting a bilingual youth choir, running the junior youth group, working with the Generations of Faith program, and even reading reflections during the Stations of the Cross in Lent.

"Holy Family has great outreach," explained Mrs. Smith, "and there's a lot of good going on here. I admire the people who have been here so long doing this."

As a missionary, she said she is charged with evangelization and prays with thrift shop customers who agree to it. She also enjoys being the "welcome person" and "getting to know people personally. You try to share faith to them, and they always end up bringing faith back to you. The idea is: If we can share God, your life changes because God is in it."

Prayer at heart
Mrs. Smith believes that Catholics in active ministries of all kinds should be aware of the importance of prayer in their work.

"It's important that, as Catholics, we pray together. Catholics do wonderful outreach, but we have to bring Jesus into it," she said. "We need to pray more and pray together. We know we have the gift of faith; we just have to share it a little more."

Regarding her own ministry, she added, "I really enjoy it. I enjoy the people. You end up seeing the joy of God in them, and get to know their stories. My husband says I come home pumped up from things here."[[In-content Ad]]

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