How did you reply to God’s calling in an unexpected direction?

Sister Maxine  
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I'm Sister Maxine, and my guest is Sister Joan Dawber. She's the founder of LifeWay Network, which, since 2007, has provided safe housing in the New York City area for women who are survivors of human trafficking. Joan, your background is in pastoral ministry. And I'd like to start there and talk about your journey from a ministry that you had for 20 years into a very different type of ministry with anti-trafficking. You worked in parish settings in the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens. What did that involve?

Sister Joan  
Oh, yes, it was, Maxine, it was a wonderful ministry. I worked with the communion ministers and the lectors, training them and bringing them into the situation of being able to be ministers. I also did outreach. We've put together a food pantry, and so we did outreach. And I ran the RCIA. So it was quite a diverse pastoral ministry, and wonderful.

Sister Maxine  
Joan, how would you describe what it was like to feel called to a new ministry, and to an unexpected direction? What was that process like for you?

Sister Joan  
It goes back to 2001, when the Union of General Superiors met in Rome that year. The general superior in our congregation had gone to that meeting. And I think it was the African women who brought to the table the experience of human trafficking in their own countries. All the general superiors and all the people who are meeting at that time really took that seriously, and made a commitment to meet together or to work together around the issue of human trafficking. Now, I got to know about it through our own general superior, who came back from that meeting, and sent out a letter inviting all of us to pray about the issue of human trafficking, and also to learn about it, to read about it. At that time, when I read that, I actually was really put off by it. I thought it was ugly. And I didn't really want to know too much about it. So at that time, I started to say, "Well, what can I do?" And so I said, "Well, I'll just pray about it." And I understand now about the strength of prayer in a different way.

Sister Maxine  
Did you find that you sensed a call, through your prayer, to this ministry that you could not maybe imagine yourself in?

Sister Joan  
Yeah, it was, it was like a call, although I was being changed by my prayer. And I didn't really know that. So I was being changed by the prayer, and wanting to know more about human trafficking. So indeed, it was a call. But it was very different in many ways. It's just--articles started to come to me rather than me go looking for them. And I remember reading this one article from the New York Times that really had a significant impact on me. It was about women who were in Mexico. And they were being actually sold in an open-air market. And then they were put to work in these caves in the side of the hills. And the perpetrators could be with them for about 15 minutes or so. And an egg timer would go off. It just was so awful. And then I realized, as I read the article more, that these women were being sent to be trafficked in New York, and it was not far from where I lived.

Sister Maxine  
That started an awakening in yourself and awareness in yourself. Was there a particular moment where you thought, "This is where I need to be, I need to be helping these women."

Sister Joan  
Absolutely. Right. And when I read that article, it was real eye-opener, a real awakening. And knowing that what could I do, I had to do something at that time. Actually, the author of the article was giving a conference in Baltimore, whenever I was trying to find out about human trafficking or find out about--it was all so hidden. It was also even the people who worked on it. There were very few people who worked on doing anything about it at that time. It was very hidden. I remember thinking, "I want to go to this." And it was being run by sisters, of course. I did. One of the sisters in my house came with me to Baltimore. And I was able to hear him give his talk. And that was another thing that really impressed me at that moment: that I was with other people who were talking about human trafficking and willing to talk about it. Whereas it had just been going around in my own head, until that time.

Sister Maxine  
As you began to go into a community that discussed this, and you began to learn more about all the different aspects of human trafficking, while you were still a pastoral associate, did that cause you to look at your work? And to look at the people you served in the parish a little bit differently? Were there any things that as you looked back on that you were like, "You know, I wonder about this."

Sister Joan  
My eyes were now open. And I couldn't not see around me and wonder if even-- Where I was working was in an area of Flushing, New York. And I do believe many, many, many women were trafficked in that area. And I kept seeing that--not that they were actually trafficked, but kept seeing women and wondering. And I tried to go to a meeting that I knew was being held by people in New York, that was being run by social service agencies. And for the life of me, I couldn't find out where this meeting was being held. It was so obscure, actually. And finally, I discovered it was being held in an agency down the street from where I worked.

Sister Maxine  
When you have those kinds of--some people might say--coincidences, I always think of them as invitations.

Sister Joan  
Yes.

Sister Maxine  
God nudging you forward a little bit at a time.

Sister Joan  
I really believe that. I don't think you necessarily think that at the beginning. I think, in retrospect, you know, clearly that it is God's work. And I've said that right from the very beginning. This is not something I do. This is God's work. And trusting in that is the only way for me.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.