What's Happening

October 16, 2025, Adrian, Michigan – Every day is a gift from God and an opportunity to find new, creative ways to reach out to God in prayer.

That is the message that Sister Maryetta Churches, OP, hopes the users of her 2026 calendar take with them every day of the approaching year.

“The message for people who use this calendar would be to try to find the Lord in new ways this year – through art, through prayer, through journaling, through expanding your horizons – and find a new relationship with the Lord,” Sister Maryetta said.

Sister Maryetta ministered for 25 years at St. Mary Magdalen Parish in Brighton, Michigan, teaching groups to pray with art and creating All Souls Day posters featuring photos of parishioners who had died in the past year. When she left the parish in 2020 and moved to the Motherhouse in Adrian, she created a calendar based on her artwork to help parishioners remember her. She continues to create calendars, now reaching a wider audience. 

She hopes members of her larger audience will draw inspiration from the calendar – featuring artwork she created during her own journaling and prayer time in recent months. Each month also includes prompts to help people deepen their prayer life and their relationship with God.

Sister Maryetta hopes that the calendar will help people find new ways to pray. “Do whatever fits your style,” such as journaling or drawing, she said. “I’m trying to get people to do something different and make it a prayer. Communicate with God – speak and listen and use different techniques that speak to you.” 
Sister Maryetta herself is responding to a new call in her life. “It’s a call to the newness of me,” she said. “But I have no idea where it’s leading me. The call is exciting and unnerving, and I want to focus on becoming more.”

She encourages others to experience God’s call in their own lives. “He’s calling you,” she said. “You are precious in his eyes and he loves you, and I hope you can say back, ‘You are precious in my life, Lord, and I love you.’”

The calendars sell for $15 and will be available at the Weber Center Shop on the Adrian Dominican Sisters Motherhouse Campus. The Shop is open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Wednesday to Friday and 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Saturday; it is closed for lunch from noon to 12:45 p.m. Visit the Weber Center Shop in person or reserve a copy by calling 517-266-4035.

Sister Maryetta also hopes to receive feedback from those who purchase and use her calendar. She can be reached at [email protected]. 
 

Caption for above feature photo: Sister Maryetta Churches, OP, displays a painting of the Holy Spirit, one of her works of art featured in her 2026 calendar.

September 19, 2024, Ann Arbor, Michigan – After buying popular art from local artists in Brazil and Peru for about 30 years, Sister Barbara Cervenka, OP, and Marion “Mame” Jackson have one more task: to return the more than 750 pieces of art, primarily to the state of Bahia, Brazil. 

Sister Barbara and Mame, then professors at the University of Michigan, made annual trips to Latin America, predominantly to Brazil, to locate and purchase popular art – art created by the people – to bring back to the United States. “We put the collection together originally to open cultural doors between North and South America,” Mame said in a recent article in The Guardian. 

Through their nonprofit organization, Con/Vida: Popular Arts of the Americas, they arranged exhibits in museums throughout the United States to give voice to the artists and to popularize their work within the North American culture. One of the organization’s earliest exhibits, Bandits & Heroes, Poets & Saints, featured the popular art from Northeastern Brazil and explored the history and culture of the Black people who settled there. Through the years, Con/Vida received some of its funding through the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Ministry Trust Fund.

Once the artwork – including paintings, religious objects, and sculptures – are returned to their native land, many will be exhibited for the local people to enjoy and appreciate.

Read more about Con/Vida and its use of popular art to bridge the gap between South and North America – and efforts to return the art – in an article by Tiago Rogero in The Guardian.
 

Caption for above photo: Sister Barbara Cervenka, OP, left, and Marion “Mame” Jackson