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The answer is Yes! All God's children are welcome:
She soon learned that the Lord had plans for her. What she found in Solana Beach was a small town with tremendous needs. She got permission to stay there and began with a zero budget. Sister Dulce became an associate pastoral assistant and the priest, who was administering two parishes, told her ‘make up your own budget – you are on your own.’
Question 2:
During the five years she was at St. Leo’s, Sister said she put herself on the back burner. She would just work all the time sometimes going three days without sleep. “But God sustained me. When I got my gift, I was exhausted. I needed to rest a while. A vision sounds pretentious, but what really happened was while praying, I felt a tremendous pain. The Lord asked me ‘What is wrong.’ I said ‘I am in terrible pain.’ The Lord said, ‘Show me your hands’ and when I did my hands were transparent like glass and inside my hands were His hands, wounds and all. Then He told me ‘Put your hands where it hurts.’ When I placed my hands on the pain, it completely disappeared and I woke up. I thought I had been dreaming, but I realized now that it was a vision through which I received the invisible stigmata,” Sister shared.
Sister Dulce did not want to initially accept the Lord’s call. She felt that she didn’t have time for this. She still had a mission to run. But the Lord’s hands guided her. His hands and His wounds are in her hands. The Lord taught her little by little and she began to use her hands and prayers to help His people.
Sister is quick to emphasize that she doesn’t like to be called a healer. “It is the Lord who is the healer. He has to be in the forefront. It’s God’s hands bringing His merciful love to others. I don’t look into a crystal ball, but it is the Lord who sees pain. I’m being used as the instrument of God. It’s like I’m able to see with my hands,” she clarifies.
Question 3:
So how did Sister Dulce find her way to Baton Rouge? As she so frequently prays before the Blessed Sacrament, one day the Lord told her to trust and pray, wait and pray, and that He would send her a priest after His own heart. They had closed the school down where she was teaching in Barstow, California and she was sent by her order to San Antonio, Texas to rest. ‘You will see a priest and I will say this is the one,’ the Lord told her. Many priests came and one day Father Jeff Bayhi, a Baton Rouge diocesan priest came to see Sister and she asked the Lord if this was the one and he said, ‘Yes.’
The Mercedarian Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament do not usually allow one of their nuns to move to a place where there is no established house, but understanding and believing in her God-given gifts, they gave Sister Dulce permission and, she claims, “the privilege” to come to Baton Rouge without the order.
Sister Dulce came to Baton Rouge in April 2001. In that period, she has prayed with thousands of patients who have carried physical struggles from cancer to the emotional burdens of the terminally ill, to the need for spiritual well being.
“Mine is not a healing ministry as much as it is a prayer ministry. I usually spend two hours, from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. in prayer at the convent before the Blessed Sacrament. I pray for my patients and for the community. I pray for their healing. I pray for the priests, nuns, deacons, laity leaders and the unborn,” says Sister. After a rigorous day seeing patients in her ministry, Sister spends many hours on the phone receiving calls and praying with people who are sick and dying from around the country and internationally, as well as from local cancer patients or terminally ill who are in pain.
When she’s not in prayer, she relaxes with her two pugs – Georgie Annie Rafael and “Boss” Barnabas Michael. “My pugs are my comfort and my joy,” she says with a smile. Sister is known for her sense of humor. “Sometimes people think of me as a fat, frumpy, little nun. But, I’m really a very simple uncomplicated person who brings God’s mercy and love to others. He has decided He’s going to use me to bring His mercy, love, and power to people. He used a very simple vessel to do a great work. I work very hard to be a faithful servant of the Lord,” shares Sister. “It’s through His grace and power that I accomplish what I do. I have no gifts. The one gift I have is that I was chosen and given the privilege to bring His love and mercy to His people.”
“The Lord said that I will bless Baton Rouge and through Baton Rouge will come to the world,” Sister says. She began her ministry in Baton Rouge at a home near LSU. As her Ministry grew, she graciously accepted room at St. Agnes Catholic Church in the school gym. She was and continues to be very grateful to Msgr. Robert Berggreen for affording her the opportunity to see more people in need by providing this much-needed space for her to work. Today, by the grace of God and in thanksgiving to Him, Sister visits with the sick and dying and those seeking spiritual growth at the Cypress Springs Mercedarian Prayer Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.