Lorenzo Ajú assists Father Samuel Mungai at Mass.
The Catholic community in Overton County has begun to grow.
Lorenzo Ajú was no stranger to Glenmary when he received a call about our newest mission. “What I enjoy is to live in the rural area and share with people in simple things,” says Lorenzo. He first started working for Glenmary in 2005, leading missions in Mississippi after moving from Guatemala.
But when Glenmary returned those missions back to the diocese, Lorenzo and his family stayed. He got a job with the Diocese of Jackson.
Over the years, Lorraine Vancamp, a former member of Glenmary’s department of Pastoral Services, had called Lorenzo twice to notify him of different lay missioner position openings. He said no twice.
Then, in 2020, Lorraine called a third time with the opportunity of starting a Catholic community in Overton County, Tennessee. This time, Lorenzo took it to prayer. “If God is calling me,” he recalls, “I’d better say yes.”
Nurturing a Community
Glenmary has three main criteria when considering a new mission area: little or no Catholic presence in the county, a high percentage is unchurched and a high percentage lives below the poverty level.
Based on the 2010 US census, Overton County had a population of 22,083 people. Not one person identified as Catholic, and 63.5 percent did not belong to a church.
Ten years later, the number of Catholics there was still unknown. “Nobody knew how many Catholics lived in that county,” Lorraine says. “Very often someone isn’t going to stand up and say, ‘Hey, I’m a Catholic.’”
So in the first year, 2022, Lorenzo was busy visiting nearby churches and gathering a list of possible Catholics living in the area. “I started calling people and inviting them,” he says.
The first Mass for the Catholic community was on June 17, 2022, at the Livingston library. Father Sam Mungai, associate pastor at Glenmary’s mission in adjacent Macon County, traveled to celebrate it. Three or four families came, Lorenzo says.
Now, a year later, the monthly Mass has moved to a small chapel on the property of the First United Methodist Church, with at least 35 people in attendance.
“We know the majority of Catholics in this county,” says Lorenzo. “It’s a small group. But we are visiting them and calling and during Mass we see a new face–maybe one or two people.”
Before Mass begins on a Saturday afternoon, Lorenzo welcomes each member and hands them a sheet with the day’s readings and songs in both English and Spanish. A homemade flower arrangement is placed before the table set up as an altar. Lorenzo points out to Father Sam members who are celebrating their birthdays and those who are in need of prayers.
The Mass itself is a seamless blend of readings, songs, preaching and prayers in both Spanish and English–a perfect reflection of the community.
After Mass, Lorenzo thanks everyone for coming and asks them to consider inviting someone to join them next month.
“Our goal is to have a strong community of faith,” he says. And part of the faith is sharing it with others. “It’s an opportunity to help this core group invite them, the unchurched people, to have this experience of community and prayer.”
Sowing Seeds of Faith
On Thursday mornings, the hall at the Methodist church is filled with friendly chatter and the constant clicking of sewing machines. Lorenzo and his wife, Nicolasa, began their involvement in the quilting ministry after meeting Katie Randle, an active member of the Methodist church, at a weekly Bible study.
Bring your sewing machine and we’ll teach you how to sew, the ministry says to interested potential members. That’s what happened to the three Catholics who now attend the quilting ministry faithfully each week. Nicolasa says she did not know how to sew before she joined a year ago. Now she’s one of the experts, says Katie, who watches Nicolasa finish one quilt in about two hours.
The ministry delivers about 20 quilts each month for newborns at the local hospital, where an average of 320 babies are born each year.
In addition to the quilting ministry and monthly Mass, the community is gathering for dinner and a rosary in the days leading up to the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe this December.
“You can do little things and see that people enjoy that and how life can change in the simple things that you are doing,” says Lorenzo.
In these small ways, Lorenzo is bringing the faithful together to pray in a county where the few Catholics had no local connection just a year and a half ago.
The Catholic community in Overton County is well on its way.
– Theresa Nguyen-Gillen
This story first appeared in the Winter 2023 publication of the Glenmary Challenge.