Meeting with Mother Teresa and work with the Missionaries of Charity guide local Catholic's life

Friday, Sep. 26, 2014

SALT LAKE CITY — Paul Braden returned home from Australia on Aug. 25 after serving a week with the Missionaries of Charity Sisters, who have helped form his life. This is something he has been doing since he was 5 years old when he met Mother Teresa, who founded the order. 

Braden is now 25 and a member of Saint Catherine of Siena Newman Center, and a civilian engineer in the United States Air Force stationed at Hill Air Force Base; he joined the Air Force in 2007. Braden also will graduate in December with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Utah.

At the time Braden met Mother Teresa, his family was living in Saudi Arabia. His father was in the Air Force and decided to have the family spend Christmas in Calcutta with Mother Teresa. 

“I brought a stuffed dinosaur with me and I was playing with it in Mother Teresa’s bedroom,” Braden said. “She saw me and asked me what I was doing. I told her I was playing dinosaurs and asked her if she wanted to play with me. She was really sweet and said she didn’t have any dinosaurs, so I gave her my dinosaur for Christmas.”

Mother Teresa had a gift for reaching to out to people and could teach them about Christ, he said. “She told me a lot of deep and powerful things, and even to this day when I work with the sisters, they always have something to teach me. Mother Teresa told me I would do great things for them someday, so that is why it is so natural and so blessed for me to be able to do what I can do.”

Braden uses his engineering skills whenever he can to fix water heaters, ovens, showers, or other things to help the sisters, he said, adding that he enjoys it because it is easy for him and God led him to it. “I can use it to help people, and that is what I love most about it,” he said. “I also do a lot of work with the orphanages and soup kitchens.”

Braden’s family has traveled all over the world working with the Missionaries of Charity at least once a month for the past 20 years, he said. He has worked with the sisters in 47 countries. 

“Growing up in the military and still being in the military today, it’s hard to have roots or somewhere to call home, so the Missionaries of Charity, in a lot of ways, have been my family; I can find them wherever I go,” Braden said. “Being with the Missionaries of Charity is being home. They are a family I can be close to; they give me the best advice and I trust them more than I trust anybody else. They’ve helped me be able to be in good relationships with others and serve others in ways that I could never have done on my own.”

On a missionary trip to Rwanda last year, Braden spent a week with orphans who were disabled helping them with physical therapy, with daily tasks like meals and teeth-brushing, and getting to school, he said. “There are a lot of disabled and abandoned children in the orphanages.” The hardest thing Braden has had to do was during a trip to Peru also last year, he said. He was asked to bury a 6-year-old orphan who died of the swine flu on the same night a magnitude 6.2 earthquake hit the country. “The sisters told me I was her father in that time and that it showed what kind of father I would be, by being able to bury her and give her that love. Her name was Valentina, so on Valentine’s Day I do something to honor her.”

Braden prays the Liturgy of the Hours, the prayers of the religious community and attends Mass and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament with the sisters, he said. He also brings communion to the homebound and prays with them, he said. “The sisters are always helping people come closer to Christ and that is one of the beauties I find in them.”

Braden’s work with the Missionaries of Charity and his faith has not gone unnoticed among his fellow parishioners. “There is no separation between Paul’s faith life and his professional life; that is what is so remarkable about him,” said Kathy Scott, a Newman Center parishioner. “He is very gentle and an incredible listener; he is cheerful, energetic and wise beyond his years.”