Sisterhood 101: COVID-19 Edition
SISTERHOOD – for young women on Youth Mission Team, this word is important. Sisterhood is central to the team experience; your hood is who you live with, who you pray with, who you evangelise with and who you do life with on the crazy adventure that is YMT. It is one of team’s greatest gifts; I’m only two months in and I can say with confidence that my sisterhood is easily the biggest blessing of team so far.
We are in an interesting time for team now, however, with a global pandemic causing disruption in normal life across the world. Team members have been sent home for a few months, for our own safety and well-being. We remain on team, just with a different way of living out the mission, by staying with our families and following social distancing measures in our homes. Consequently, it can be easy for us to despair over this situation and worry that geographical distance will damage relationships within our team and within our hood. It’s tempting to believe we can’t properly do team and do sisterhood when we’re not even with our team or living with our sisterhood (or brotherhood).
Do not despair!
Attitude in these situations is important. Instead of seeing COVID-19 as a hindrance to living out team’s vision for sisterhood, we can see it as an opportunity to build an even stronger sisterhood. The cliché that absence makes the heart grow fonder can apply in a deeper way here – physical, geographical distance during this pandemic can draw teams and hoods even closer spiritually. Working through challenges always strengthens relationships, and this is no different. I believe God is calling Youth Mission Team (and everyone) to embrace the current circumstances and look for what he is doing in the present moment. God has a tendency to bring good things out of hard places – he can and will strengthen hoods during this time like never before!
Practical tips
Like any relationship, sisterhood takes work and effort (and cooperation with God’s grace), especially in the face of challenges like the current pandemic. My sisterhood have taken some practical steps to ensure we continue to grow closer during this crazy time:
Praying for the sisterhood
It is so important to continually pray for your sisterhood (whether separated due to a virus or not!) We pray that God would draw us together in unity, increase our selflessness and sacrificial love, and lead us to where he is calling us. Some good ways of doing this are to offer the sisterhood up as an intention of a daily Rosary and daily Mass. Our local parish back in Sydney is live streaming Mass every day [here], which has been excellent for staying connected to Sydney and each other. Asking some boss female saints to pray for the sisterhood is also a good idea, first among them being Mary, literal queen of heaven. Elizabeth (Mary’s cousin), Thérèse of Lisieux (our household patron saint) and the hood’s Confirmation saints are all good options too! Continually surrendering the sisterhood to God builds a firm, heavenly foundation that no virus can mess with.
Praying as a sisterhood
Although geographically apart, our sisterhood continues to be united in prayer every single day. We maintain the long-standing team tradition of 20/20/20 morning prayer (20 minutes of reading daily readings, 20 minutes of journaling, 20 minutes of sharing our insights with each other), but now we send in our reflections to a group chat due to time zone differences. This method of doing 20s actually has a lot of unique blessings to it – receiving insights via text throughout the day at different times are reminders that help us reflect on the Scriptures for more than just one hour in the morning. It’s also nice to have a record in the group chat of everyone’s reflections to go back to. I even find that the extra step of typing out my response cements it better in my mind than only writing in my journal. Another great option is to call the sisterhood on the phone for the sharing section, which would be an awesome way to check in with each other every day too!
We also continue doing night prayer (Compline) every day – although at different times, it is really incredible to know that your sisters (along with the whole Church!) are singing the exact same psalms around Australia.
Finally, regularly asking for each other’s intentions to pray for is another beautiful way we keep our sisterhood united in prayer.
Staying connected
Our sisterhood does this in many ways, some stranger than others. As mentioned before, we have a group chat, and we regularly call and FaceTime each other. One of our funny commitments is sending in *just woke up* selfies – we started this because we missed waking up to each other’s weird morning selves!! This reminds us of our sisterhood from the moment we wake up, and we go to bed after singing the same night prayer as our sisters. It’s pretty special to have the start and end of the day rooted in our sisterhood, even though we are spread out across Australia.
Other fun ways to stay connected include writing letters, sending care packages, watching movies at the same time, making the same food, doing the same YouTube workouts…the options are plentiful!
Working together on projects
Team members definitely haven’t stopped work since going home – we are now focusing our energies on online formats. Our sisterhood stays connected by working together on social media projects – planning ideas for posts, photos, captions and more blog posts. We’ll be attending online youth groups and doing other online outreaches together as well!
He makes all things work together for our good
There are so many ways our sisterhood has been able to grow and strengthen during this pandemic, ways that were not available when we were living normal team life. Obviously, we are all looking forward to returning to Sydney, living in household and doing school ministry again, but until then, we are so grateful for how God is drawing us together, here and now.
I firmly believe the lessons learned during our quarantine will bear fruit now, when we return to ministry, and later in our lives. Imagine how much stronger our sisterhood will be after all this – we won’t take living in household for granted; instead, gratitude and joy will characterise our sisterhood. Learning to put in effort now, when we are living apart, will help us put in effort later when living together.
These lessons are applicable outside of team, too. Whether you’re on team or not, praying for and with your friends, staying connected online and through other cute or weird ways, and working together on projects are all excellent ways to build up your relationships. We might be in physical isolation, but we are definitely not in spiritual, emotional or psychological isolation. In fact, God might want to use this period to strengthen your relationships like never before. He likes to do crazy things like that.
Laura is an eighteen-year-old native Canberran who is fresh out of high school and already misses writing essays. Like any good Victorian literature heroine, she enjoys brisk walks and compelling novels, and she is also an enthusiastic cake baker. She was recently introduced to the film The Emperor’s New Groove and loves it with her whole heart. Laura is serving her first year on Youth Mission Team in Sydney.