Program by Stockton-based nuns looks at the power of the story to teach

First, they addressed Pope Francis’ encyclical, “Laudato Si,” which called for taking care of the poor and the needy and the Earth.

Then, they shared the story of pilgrimage through first-person accounts of nuns in their 60s, 70s and 80s hiking the “Camino de Santiago” in France and Spain.

Now, the Stockton-based nuns of the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael present their third annual spiritual/theological discussion with “Who is My Neighbor: Stories of Journeys From Exclusion to Inclusion.” The free event is 9 a.m. to noon today at O’Connor Woods, 3400 Wagner Heights Road, Stockton.

“The sisters were talking about what we might have for a program, and the question came up, ‘why are we so divided?’” said sister Abby Newton, the vice president of mission integration and spiritual care at St. Joseph’s Medical Center and the event organizer. “As we worked at that, maybe the more precise and better question became who is my neighbor?”

From that discussion, the group of nuns and laypeople who have organized the annual event turned to the story of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke, in which a priest and Levite pass by a man who had been robbed and beaten on the road, while a Samaritan stopped, tended him, took him on his donkey to an inn and paid for the innkeeper to look after the man.

As Jesus tells the story, the question is asked, “Who is my neighbor?” Newton said.

“We started to think about the power of the story to teach,” Newton said.

The committee selected Occeletta Briggs, Sovanna Koeurt, Marina Hernandez and Sister Patricia Simpson to share their stories.

Briggs was born in West Virginia, lived in a segregated town and attended an allblack school until she was a junior in high school and the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education ruling integrated the local high school.

“The whites didn’t want us there, and we didn’t want to be there,” Briggs said.

She earned a nursing degree and took a job at San Joaquin General Hospital in 1967, when housing options in Stockton for her were limited. She became the first African-American director of nursing at the hospital, has served on countless boards and is a tireless contributor to Stockton causes.

Koeurt escaped the killing fields of Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge murdered nearly 2 million people. She made her way to Stockton, where one day in 1989 she waited anxiously to learn that her two sons at Cleveland Elementary School were unharmed when a gunman attacked.

An English speaker, Koeurt became a leader in her community and is executive director of the Asian Pacific Self-Development and Residential Association, the group that helped residents purchase the Park Village Apartments and create a community center for the mostly Cambodian community.

“If there isn’t that tragedy, maybe they don’t trust me,” Koeurt told The Record in 2009. “But because I lived there, I helped them all along from the beginning. I didn’t ask for any money or anything, just helping, so they see that I’m really with them and I’m really honest . ... I think that day changed my life tremendously. If that day not happen, the whole community not going to be changed like today.”

Hernandez, brought to this country from Mexico as an infant, was profiled in The Record in 2003. She was a student at San Joaquin Delta College who dreamed of an education but was stymied by her lack of legal status and parents who clung to the traditional role of women in a household.

“I read through the article and because of what I was doing with family-based immigration and being up on the law at the time, I thought something was wrong with this,” said Sister Judy Lu McDonald, who worked in legal immigration for Catholic Charities then.

Through the writer, McDonald and fellow nun Lyn Kirkconnell connected with Hernandez and helped her get the legal documents she needed. Hernandez graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2008 with a degree in ethnic studies.

“In 2007, she came and did an internship with us in the immigration office at Catholic Charities and picked up some things about immigration and law,” McDonald said. “She had a dream of being an immigration attorney and is applying to law schools now.”

Sister Patricia Simpson will visit from San Rafael and share the story of the Lady of Lourdes, the Dominican Sisters care facility she runs.

When Pope Francis urged people to open their hearts to Syrian refugees, the nuns wanted to convert an area of the facility into housing for some of them. They realized didn’t have any other services to offer refugees, and settled instead on opening their doors to local homeless.

Working with an organization called Homeward Bound, the sisters had the refurbishing done to create apartments that can house two women and up to four children.

The Yellow Hallway project — despite protests from some neighbors — now is open and houses two women and three children transitioning from homelessness.

Collectively, Newton said, the stories answer the question of “Who is my neighbor?”