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OUR STORY

Silvio and Maria Garcia

We met by doing ministry together in college.  When we got married, we knew we wanted to get back to it.  There was a longing in us too deep, too consistent for it to have been a passing fancy.  It was a core desire in each of us that we were sure the Holy Spirit had put there.  What we didn't yet realize was that ministry would soon characterize our marriage.

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A job doing young adult ministry for a grouping of parishes was placed in Silvio's lap about a year and a half after we got married.  We were thrilled; it was the dream job.  It was beautiful to help raise up a community of young adults with the intention of growing closer to Jesus as a group.  It was neat to watch the community come to a point of thriving in less than a year.  We imagined living there for the rest of our lives, but the Lord had different plans, even more exciting.

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A bit out of the blue, the Holy Spirit started showing up in tremendous ways a year after we had moved there.  I (Maria) had had pretty severe insomnia for about three years.  I'd been prayed over countless times and tried every health hack in the book, but the insomnia only got worse and wreaked havoc on my whole body and immune system.  I was sick and lifeless most of the time.  One day, I met with my spiritual director and we weren't even talking about my insomnia when he received a relentless nudge from the Holy Spirit to pray over my pineal gland, the part of the brain that produces melatonin.  He did, and we could both feel heat coursing through us--his hand, my head.  I knew without a doubt before I left that night that I had been healed.  I've been sleeping soundly ever since.

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Being healed was much more than getting to be healthy again.  It was coming face to face with the power of God exactly as it is described all through the Bible, but uniquely shaped for me.  It was the start of a new journey for both of us.  One month later, Silvio went to the FOCUS national leadership conference where he, too, experienced both a healing of his own and also some clear messages from the Holy Spirit about the young adult ministry we were doing: Don't plan anything ourselves.  Spend tons of time in prayer.  In everything, follow His lead and He'll make what to do very clear.

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When he came home, we were both extremely fired up.  We'd each been shown God's powerful love in extremely personal, extremely intense ways, and now He was sending us messages in our prayer, constantly, about how He was about to do something big.  He told us this so constantly, and right on the heels of those healings, that we trusted Him like we never had before.

Within a week, we lost the job!

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Under any other circumstances, we'd have been devastated.  After all that had just happened, it felt like a launching pad toward whatever the Holy Spirit seemed to be revving us up for.

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We decided to take a weekend to mourn and not think about the next step, but we couldn't.  The idea of moving to my hometown, DuBois, to start a young adult community there, entered our minds and wouldn't leave: it kept expanding.  We couldn't ignore it.  So, we decided to investigate.  We went and joined my parents' prayer group that weekend, asking God to let us know if this is what He wanted us to do. 

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Doors opened everywhere, instantly.  One of the first details we needed to iron out was a place to live.  While we were praising, I suddenly remembered that a friend of ours had an empty house in his backyard but I told Silvio that I didn't want to presume to ask for it; so, Lord, if this is Your idea, would You give it to him too?  The next day at the prayer meeting, while we were praising, this friend couldn't get the idea of his empty house out of his head and so, thinking the Lord was nudging him to do so, he offered it to us.  We mentioned the idea of starting a ministry to the prayer group; they were extremely supportive, so we started talking to different leaders in the area and received nothing but support and encouragement.  Finally we went to pray up at the Cross on the Hill in Benezette, a place where many people experience God's presence in a palpable, undeniable way.  There, we experienced absolute clarity: we were being called to do this.  In the weeks that followed, Scripture passages, songs, homilies, everything we heard was a confirmation and an encouragement.

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Then the pandemic hit!  As soon as we moved in and were ready to go.  But it helped us to think outside the box, and led to discovering some parts of our mission which were beyond what we first imagined.  We are still discovering.  Like He told us just before we got launched on this adventure, the Holy Spirit has done all the planning and made it clear what to do and when--and everything has fallen into place.  We've done the work, but He's shown us what to do and multiplied it amazingly.  He's brought people into our community we never knew existed, and the interactions and depth and joy between people are beyond anything we ever dreamed of.  It wasn't long before we were even able to start evangelizing the youth as a team of young adults, working not just for the young adults but with them.

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It blows our minds to think back on how God called us to this.  It's so much like the New Testament, because God is so consistent: He showed us His power, He showed us something to be excited about, and then He sent us forth.  We have never known anything so deeply, never felt so surely called, as we have with this mission.

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Please pray for us.  We are so excited to be on this adventure, but we need all the prayers we can get!

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Our Story: About

MEET THE TEAM

The Faces of Holy Family Young Adults

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SILVIO GARCIA

Silvio was born in the Dominican Republic, grew up in New York City, and met the Lord when he was in his teens by encountering peers who inspired him.  After that he worked as a student missionary for Saint Paul's Outreach, spent time at Saint Vincent Archabbey discerning becoming a monk, and after discerning that that was not the Lord's long-term plan for him, married Maria. 

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Silvio has experience doing ministry in campus and parish settings, he has a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Saint Vincent College, and he has taken the spiritual accompaniment course from Father Boniface Hicks and Father Thomas Acklin from Saint Vincent Seminary.

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MARIA GARCIA

Maria was raised in a Catholic homeschooling family out in the country.  She fell in love with the Lord through praising with music. Her passions include using music and art to help other people fall in love with him too.

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Maria has experience doing ministry in campus and parish settings, she has a bachelor's degree in studio art and theology from Saint Vincent College, and she has taken the spiritual accompaniment course from Father Boniface Hicks and Father Thomas Acklin from Saint Vincent Seminary.

Our Story: Meet the Team
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