“More than the work, I really do love the Chilean people. They’re wonderful, very outgoing and very friendly. They take you in and they accept you very well. I do love the work very much, too. I guess this is just the kind of work that’s right for me because I love all the crafty stuff, teaching and the diversity of the place. No two years are ever the same, almost no two weeks are ever the same, either.”

Sister Mimi Ballard (r.) and Marcela make plans for ordering materials for the sewing classes at Casa Ursulina. Marcela, a member of the core group of volunteers, is one of the regular sewing teachers.

    Sister Mary Elizabeth “Mimi” Ballard, an Ursuline Sister of Mount Saint Joseph, was talking about her 10-year ministry as director of the Dianna Ortiz Ursuline Center for Women, also known as Casa Ursulina (Ursuline House), in Chillán in Chile, South America. Casa Ursulina serves just under 200 women in this poverty-plagued area, teaching them crafts, giving them an opportunity to earn money with their craft making, and providing them with classes to further their personal growth.
      “Sister Mimi has always had the heart of a missionary: a sense of adventure, a willingness to try something new and ‘to go with the flow,’” says Sister Michele Morek, congregational leader of the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph.  “Among all her other gifts, who knew that it would be her knack with crafts and her teaching skills that would turn into Casa Ursulina? This is a wonderful example of how, if we turn our gifts over to God, God can do wonders with them. Or, as Angela Merici would have said, Act, move, believe, have faith...and you will see marvelous things!
      “Our Ursuline community of Mount Saint Joseph is so grateful to Mimi that she is our presence in South America – for where one of us is, there are we all!”

Sister Michele Morek (l.), the congregational leader of the Maple Mount Ursulines, says the Ursuline community is grateful to Sister Mimi for being its presence in South America.

     Sister Mimi is the oldest girl in a large family, the fourth oldest of 13 children born to Lawrence Ballard, Jr., a lifelong Bell Telephone employee, and Mary Orline Simpson Ballard, a nurse and homemaker. Their offspring consisted of eight girls and five boys. The family was living in Fairfield, Kentucky, when Mary Elizabeth was born, but they moved to Bardstown when she was a young girl.
      For eight years Mimi attended Saint Michael Grade School in Fairfield, where she was taught by Maple Mount Ursulines.
      Her going on to Mount Saint Joseph for high school came as no surprise to her teachers, family members and friends.
      Sister Dolorita Robinson, one of Mimi’s teachers at Saint Michael, remembers an early desire of Mimi’s to become a sister. “She was one of two girls and two boys who lived in the same neighborhood and liked to play Mass together,” she recalls being told. “The boys always played the priests and the girls played the servers. One day Mimi and the other girl told the boys that they were going to play the priests because they were both going to be sisters someday. They played the roles of priests that day, and they both went on to become sisters – Mimi became an Ursuline, of course, and the other girl became a Carmelite.”
      “Since I was a little kid I always wanted to be a sister,” Sister Mimi recalls. “The sisters knew that, and they encouraged me to come to the Mount for high school. I also got a wonderful scholarship and that helped too.”  She says Sister Mary

Sister Dolorita Robinson was Sister Mimi's eighth grade teacher at Saint Michael Grade School in Fairfield. "Mimi was a good student," Sister Dolorita recalls. "She was also a very kind person and got along very well with her fellow students."

Edgar Warren played a major role in her going to Mount Saint Joseph for high school and in her becoming an Ursuline Sister. “I had Sister Mary Edgar for five of my eight years at Saint Michael’s,” says Sister Mimi. “I thought she was so wonderful and I wanted to be just like her. And when I entered the community after high school graduation, she was in charge of the postulants.”
      Following high school graduation, Sister Mimi began college at Brescia College as a postulant. Although she hadn’t yet completed the work toward her teaching degree, she began her teaching career early at Saint William School in Knottsville when that school was in need of a teacher for first, second and third grade students.
      After three years at Saint William, Sister Mimi taught kindergarten classes at Brescia for five years before her first venture to South America in 1978.
      Why South America? “I always wanted to be a missionary,” says Sister Mimi. “At least since the fourth or fifth grade. So I had this conflict because I also wanted to be an Ursuline, and Ursulines were not missionaries. But when I was in high school in 1965, the Ursulines sent their first missionaries to Chile — and that solved my conflict.”
      But the solution didn’t come easily. She recalls, “I asked to go to Chile probably every year for maybe five years before they finally said yes. Part of the reason was that I didn’t make my final vows until ’74, and then I hadn’t completed my master’s degree, and it wouldn’t have been very sensible to go off and leave that undone.”

After painting faces on about 100 angels, Nora and Sister Mimi show off their work. Angels are among many crafts made at Casa Ursulina that are sold at Mount Saint Joseph Book and Gift Shop.

     Finally, in 1978, after she completed her final vows and earned her master’s degree in early childhood education, Sister Mimi’s dream was fulfilled. She was sent to Chillán, Chile, where the Ursuline Sisters were doing pastoral ministry work.
      She worked in Chillán until 1986 when she joined fellow Ursuline Sister Dianna Ortiz and two Franciscan sisters in Guatemala to do pastoral ministry in San Miguel Acatán for four years.
      Sister Mimi returned to Chile in 1991, working with fellow Ursuline Sister Gia Mudd and Sister of Mercy Jane Kendrick in parish ministry in Viňa del Mar.
      In 1993 Sister Mimi returned to Chillán to begin work specifically with women in crisis situations such as low incomes and raising children alone. This led to the establishment of Casa Ursulina in 1997.
      The first home for Casa Ursulina was a low-income government house, one half of a duplex 5 by 7 meters (15 by 21 feet). “It had a classroom, a bedroom – where I lived – and a supply room,” Sister Mimi recalls. “There were two wooden shacks in the back of the house which we also used as classrooms.”
      Officially known as The Dianna Ortiz Ursuline Center for Women, the building was expanded 18 months later through a grant from the Conrad Hilton Fund for Sisters and funds raised by Sister Suzanne Sims and the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph. “We knocked down one of the shacks and built a sewing room the same size plus an upstairs room where I moved my quarters,” says Sister Mimi. “A year later we obtained some additional funds, tore down the second shack, and built a meeting room and kitchen.”
      The most recent addition to the center came in 2003 with the purchase of the other half of the duplex. The purchase added an additional 15 x 21 feet of space plus another shack behind the building and more back yard space, where a small open room for exercise classes was built in 2004.

During a two-month sabbatical at Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods in Indiana, Sister Mimi learned practical fiber arts skills which she will pass on to the ladies at Casa Ursulina. (Photo Courtesy Sisters of Providence, Saint-Mary-of-the Woods)

     With the purchase of the other half of the duplex, Sister Mimi says the center finally has the space it needs for its many programs.
      One aspect of the house is a cooperative with women with financial needs producing items (crafts, weaving, sweatshirts) for sale to produce a steady income. The co-op uses the center every morning, Monday through Friday.
      Afternoons from 3-5 are used for classes. A wide variety of classes – knitting, sewing, crocheting, cooking, baking and painting – are taught by volunteer women. English, dancing and exercise classes are available two to three evenings a week from 5:30-7. Childcare is available, thanks to volunteer childcare workers.
      How is the center financed? The women pay one dollar a month (500 pesos) for the classes – if they can afford it, Sister Mimi explains. And that “just about pays for the utilities.” She continues, “We have an ongoing bazaar, the women hold fish fries and they host a big Independence Day fundraising celebration every year. Saint Joseph parish in my hometown of Bardstown has been very generous, giving us between four and five thousand dollars every year, a lot of people in the states donate pretty steadily, and we get small grants every now and then.”
      Sister Mimi recently spent two months participating in a Sisters of Providence sabbatical program at Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods near Terre Haute, Indiana, to learn practical fiber arts skills and to be spiritually renewed. She wanted to learn the new craft to broaden the fiber arts program at Casa Ursulina. While on sabbatical, she was featured on the Providence sisters' web site (http://www.spsmw.org/cgi-bin/site.pl?3208&dwContent_contentID=22), and she left the Woods with much more than new craft skills.

Sister Ruth Gehres will be joining Sister Mimi later this year to begin a new ministry at Casa Ursulina.

“I learned to make yarns like spinning yarn and 100 percent wool items like that,” says Sister Mimi. “And before I left, the Providence Sisters held a bingo and a few other things to raise money for two spinning wheels. They were just a great group of women. It was really something how they just got involved in this whole project. Even after I left, the sister in charge of the sabbatical program came up with more money for me to buy more equipment when I get to Chile. I thank God a lot of people like this project. I think they may like the fact that the money we generate goes directly to the women.”
      Sister Mimi also has words of praise for fellow Ursuline sister Suzanne Sims, director of development and mission advancement for the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph.
      “Sister Suzanne has been my lifesaver on everything,” Sister Mimi proclaims. “Every time I’ve had some real big need, she’s come through. She’s been as faithful to this mission as anybody in that for any major advancement thing we’ve needed – like when we needed to build on, when we needed to get more space, when we had certain crisis situations we needed money for – she has always come through. She did it by getting the donors, by getting in contact with the people. Sister Suzanne’s always been there whenever I’ve had a need.”

Sister Mimi and baby Constanza enjoy a visit at the home of Carola Pulgar, an Ursuline Associate who is one of the founders of Casa Ursulina. Constanza is the daughter of a friend of Mimi and Carola.

     Sister Ruth Gehres, associate director of communications for the Ursulines at Maple Mount, made a month-long visit to Casa Ursulina in March of 2006.
      “It was amazing to me that this ministry – just 10 years old – has become such an important part of the lives of the women who are part of the Casa Ursulina community,” says Sister Ruth. “From the beginning, Mimi involved the women themselves in planning and carrying out this ministry. She knows how to bring out the best in them, and to challenge them to become leaders. This sense of empowerment is at the heart of the mission of Casa Ursulina.”
      Sister Ruth found the joyful spirit at Casa Ursulina so compelling that she will soon be making a major change in her ministry.
      She says, “From my first day at Casa Ursulina, I was energized by Mimi's free spirit, creativity, and dedication to the women and children who come here for learning and growing. Days are long, and Mimi works hard, along with the women who work closely with her in coordinating the work. But she always has time to laugh, to listen, to be delighted with someone's new idea, to be compassionate with someone in need of support. This joyful spirit is infectious; I am one of many who have ‘caught’ it.”
      She “caught” it, indeed. Shortly after her return from Chillán, Sister Ruth announced that she is leaving her position with the communications department at Mount Saint Joseph to become a volunteer worker with Sister Mimi at Casa Ursulina, effective September 1 of this year.

These seven women, together with Sister Mimi, are responsible for the development of Casa Ursulina. All are Ursuline Associates. From left, Evelina Salas, Yolanda Moraga, Inés Galvéz, Sonia Pradenas, Sister Mimi, Carola Pulgar, Paty Jamett, Raquel Sepúlveda.

     Sister Mimi is thrilled to welcome Sister Ruth back to Chile permanently. “For me to be able to live with another Ursuline sister is just wonderful,” she says. The women of Casa Ursulina are also looking forward to Sister Ruth’s return. “When she was there in March she really committed and got along well with the women."
      What will Sister Ruth add to the joyful, infectious spirit she discovered last March at Casa Ursulina? Says Sister Mimi, “She will add her many talents and her ideas. There are a lot of things she can offer to the women and teach them there. She will know what that is after she’s there a year or so.”
      Sister Mimi has been part of Casa Ursulina for 10 years, and has become an important part of many families in Chillán.
      She says, “The women I’m working with now I knew when they were children. I worked with their mothers years ago. I’m like in second and third generations there.” She continues, “I’ve got godchildren all over the area. If you’re a child’s godmother, that establishes a family bond with you and the mother and father of that child. And that relationship is something real important in Hispanic life.”
      Sister Mimi just turned 59. How long does she plan to remain at Casa Ursulina?
      Without hesitation she says, “I don’t plan on working anywhere else. You never know what’s going to happen, but I feel like I’ll be there as long as my health allows me to be there. I’m too old to look for another job now and I’m certainly happy where I am.”

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