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People On The Move - Sister Mary Elizabeth Lloyd
10/27/2009 - By Teja Anderson
ON A MISSION TO SAVE ORPHANS
Sister Mary Elizabeth Lloyd, 60, known simply as Sister Mary Beth, grew up in Red Bank and Little Silver – the only girl of four children. She fondly remembers summers at the Jersey Shore, swimming for driftwood in Sea Bright and hanging out in front of Golden’s Men’s Shop in Red Bank with her brothers. Although she attended Red Bank Catholic High School for 3 years, a scholarship offer for a year of nursing school brought her, in her senior year, to Villa Victoria Academy in Trenton. There she met the Filippini nuns, and realized her calling. A doctorate in nutrition and public health from Columbia University and time working at New York City’s Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center guided her to her dream of becoming a missionary.
As the world wide Missionary Director for the Filippini Religious Teachers since 1995, Sister Mary Beth, approximately 80 other nuns, and countless volunteers have been helping women, girls at risk, orphans, AIDS orphans, and child-headed households (CHH) in Albania, Brazil, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and India. Their goals are to provide elementary education, training in micro-enterprises (like sewing, cultivating, and teaching) and even finding local jobs for them. The odds stacked against them are staggering; a new CHH begins every 14 seconds, and the number of AIDS orphans will nearly double to 25 million by next year. This year there will be 67,000 new AIDS orphans in the U.S. alone, but Sister Mary Beth always has hope. “For $10 I can buy 400 rolls, and some children only eat one roll a day. Even a small donation goes a long way.”
Her beautiful weathered face hints of the atrocities she has seen. “There was this little guy, 6 years old, and he had TB of the bone… He sits up in bed and says, Oh, if I could just have a glass of milk I know I can get better!’ Or the 6 children in Brazil who were kidnapped on their way to the mission school and had their organs harvested for sale on the black market…their small bodies found later, gutted and dumped. Or the lucky, but terrified, seventh child who was found tied to a bed awaiting a similar fate. Then there are the hundreds of young girls and boys (ages 6-9) rescued after being sold by their desperate families into prostitution; their young age makes them theoretically free of diseases…more marketable.”
Sister Mary Beth’s soft blue eyes still sparkle as she talks about the hope that she has for many of these children, and the success stories that are sprinkled in with the horrors. There was the 12-year-old boy in Eritrea whose parents’ deaths left him with five rentable camels and the ability earn a living. He brought some of his profits, instructing, “Sisters, you take this money and give it to who needs it most because I don’t think I could do it justly.” Or the girls they set up with donated gelato machines and pizza ovens, who were taught to run their own businesses so that they can eventually go to colleges and universities. Or the boy who came at age 6 with his 3-year-old brother in tow and no other living relatives; they gave him six eggs, and he’s now a successful farmer, supplying eggs to the Mission. When Sister Mary Beth arrived in Albania, a country with little left over from the Communist regime, she was greeted with cries of “We love God and Bon Jovi!” “I would love for him to go there and do a concert for the children,” she says wistfully. She has many ideas for others to help. “Tell your friends and everyone you meet to keep donating anything they can. Money, of course, is wonderful, but clothes, shoes, even those plastic blue tarps (children use them as homes, held up with sticks and boxes). They do make their way to the children through churches, Good Will, Save the Children, Heifer, UNICEF…”
You can also help by purchasing Sister Mary Beth’s book, “AIDS Orphans Rising” or go to www.AIDSOrphansRising.com.org. And, by the way, she also runs marathons (in her habit), speaks fluent Italian, and is happy to go anywhere to speak on behalf of the orphans. She can be reached at (973) 538-2886 ext.124.
*The commission from this story was donated to Sister Mary Beth’s cause.
STATS
FAVORITE RESTAURANT
Luigi’s Famous Pizza, Red Bank
FAVORITE MUSIC
Mathew West, Christian Rock
FAVORITE MOVIE
Out of Africa
PET PEEVE
Italian traffic cops!
THREE PEOPLE YOU WOULD LIKE TO HAVE DINNER WITH
Mother Theresa, Pope John Paul, and Einstein
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