Many people serve others by giving time, talent or treasure. Robert and Tami Erisman, parishioners of St. Paul in Ham Lake, have spent time the past four years serving people in the Amazonian region of Peru. And their eight children joined them.
Robert felt called ever since he was “a kid in school” when he and classmates visited a city mission in East St. Louis. “I was just blown away at the opportunity to serve people there, to serve the poor, and it changed my life,” he said. But he wanted to be a foreign missionary. “I don’t know why, except for the Lord put it on my heart,” he said.
Robert and Tami recently joined “Practicing Catholic” radio show host Patrick Conley to discuss their family’s life of serving people in Peru.
Every day is different, Robert said. Their first year, as non-Spanish speakers, Robert said he couldn’t preach the Gospel in words, so he built relationships with men by working with them, including loading wood into trucks to bring back to town. Tami homeschooled the children and built relationships with local women.
“This is the beautiful thing about mission,” Robert said. “So first the mission is our own personal holiness and then having a holy marriage and a holy family so that we can live the Gospel, be a witness to the people through our lives,” he said.
One of the biggest blessings Tami said she encounters is going to people’s homes and praying with them, for example, when someone is sick or dying. Sometimes the children join in with prayer, she said.
“I think it’s been really powerful for them to see how other people live and to come and pray with other people,” Tami said. “We’ve experienced so many miracles of healing,” she said. Doing so, her children have seen “the power of prayer and they know that God is a real God that works miracles,” Tami said.
Tami recalled the warm welcome and excitement from the local children when the family arrived. “And in our first few weeks and months there, I just felt so much joy.” Tami expected her children to experience homesickness and perhaps complain about the living conditions, “but they really didn’t. I just feel like it was an overwhelming sense of peace and joy in getting there,” she said.
Despite the heat and getting used to an “open” house with cats and spiders “running through the house,” Robert recalled how kind and welcoming the people were in their village of about 1,200. “They really invited us into their life,” he said. “Just a great sense of peace and joy.”
Prayers sustain the family, Robert said. “It’s so powerful. Like my wife said, miracles abound and in large part due to people who partner with us through prayers.”
To learn more about the Erismans and support their mission work, visit francisinstitute.org. To read the Erismans’ blog posts and learn about the mission organization they joined in 2018, visit familymissionscompany.com/project/rterisman.
To hear the full interview, listen to this episode of “Practicing Catholic,” which debuts at 9 p.m. Jan. 13 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM and repeats at 1 p.m. Jan. 14 and 2 p.m. Jan. 15.
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the latest show also includes an interview with Sonya Flomo, Life Fund grants administrator in the Office of Marriage, Family and Life at the archdiocese, who discusses the fund and how it helps women in crisis pregnancies choose life; and Bob Swift from St. Gabriel Holy Land Pilgrimages, who describes an upcoming pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
Listen to interviews after they have aired at PracticingCatholicShow.com or choose a streaming platform at anchor.fm/practicing-catholic-show.
