Few people know how it is to live as a refugee --- the uncertainty of being homeless, the crowded conditions and lack of privacy of living in a refugee camp; the physical pain of severe hunger; the emotional anguish of watching one's own child die of starvation.

Most people have never had to walk hundreds - even thousands - of miles to escape violence and genocide. And even fewer would willingly leave their comfortable lives to live in such conditions.

Sister of Mercy Marilyn Lacey has lived with and ministered to refugees for over a quarter of a century, including 25 years as director of refugee services for Catholic Charities in San Jose. In her powerful book "This Flowing Toward Me" (Ave Maria Press), she chronicles her call into and subsequent life of working with refugees in some of the world's poorest and most dangerous places --- and, her life-changing stories of how she met God in the poorest of the poor.

With vivid detail, Sister Lacey transports the reader into the world of the refugee --- physically, spiritually and emotionally, as she tells of adjusting to the culture shock of living in Sudan and parts of Southeast Asia. Her vignettes --- peppered with good humor and loving compassion --- expose the raw realities of poverty, violence and starvation (and, in some cases, politics and bureaucracy) that permeates the lives of those to whom she ministered.

Her experiences, Sister Lacey makes clear, have turned her own life upside down, and opened her to new encounters with God. Amidst extreme poverty, she learned, were people in whom a strength and spirit sustained dreams of new lives in new places --- even though, she discovered, only a fraction of them would ever be relocated, while much of the aid available never reached the most vulnerable and needy.

The 61-year-old San Francisco native entered the Sisters of Mercy soon after graduating from Mercy High School, Burlingame, in 1966. Her assignments included teaching math and theology at Bishop Conaty-Our Lady of Loreto High School in Los Angeles, prior to working with refugees --- a ministry that began with a response to a bulletin board request for volunteers (described in her book's opening chapter).

In 2008, Sister Lacey began Mercy Beyond Borders, an effort to assist women and children in extreme poverty. It is also, she says, her response and gift to the people who have touched her life. During a recent interview with The Tidings, she shared her dreams and new goals.

Q. What is Mercy Beyond Borders?
A. It is a nonprofit whose mission is to partner with displaced women and children in ways that alleviate their extreme poverty. The phrase extreme poverty comes from the United Nations millennium goals, one of which is to reduce extreme poverty in ten years. Extreme poverty means living on less than a dollar a day, so we are talking about very desperate types of situations, most of which are in Africa, a few of which are in Southeast Asia.

For the first few years we are focusing just on south Sudan, because it has one quarter of the world's displaced people. MBB is non-profit, non-sectarian with a board of directors. It is very tiny right now, but I hope within 10 or 20 years we will be as well known as Doctors Without Borders, for example, for the work we do. We are inspired by the charism of the Mercy Sisters.

Q. What inspired you to create this organization?
A. For 25 years I worked with Refugee Resettlement as director of the refugee and immigration program at Catholic Charities San Jose. But in fact fewer than one-half of one percent of the world's refugees ever get selected for resettlement in the West - which would be mainly Canada, U.S. and Australia. Ninety-nine and a half percent are stuck. They spend 15 or 20 years in refugee camps and eventually they trickle back to their homelands where their lives are extremely tenuous and challenging.

During my sabbatical while I was writing the book the idea came to me - I hope planted there by God - that I should shift my attention now to that 99 and a half percent. So I founded the non-profit with the hope of working particularly with the displaced women.

In my work with refugees, I have seen that very often agencies or organizations giving aid work through the "head of household" or men, and the women don't get their due. And the aid doesn't always get directed to where it does the most good, like buying food for the children, as it does when the money is directed to the women. Not many aid organizations are working directly with displaced women - there are some - but none in the parts of southern Sudan where we are focusing, so we thought this is a niche that we can begin to fill.

Q. What did living with refugees teach you about God and the human spirit?
A. Especially in the stories of the Lost Boys, and the story of Gabriel, the close bonds of friendship taught me a lot about church and what that means. All of the guys have a very strong faith in God. I think this is typical of most refugees because they have been stripped of everything else and they realize they have only their relationships with one another and with God. It is very inspiring to work with refugees and see the resilience of the human spirit and what can be rebuilt after so much has been taken away.

Q. What are some of the ways your experiences with refugees changed you?
A. I am working with people all day long that have lost everything. Whatever hardships I go through are so minimal compared to what the world's refugees are always going through. I now take a lot of things much more in stride; I don't get as upset over small things; I am filled with much more joy. I know what matters in life better than I knew 25 years ago before I started this work.

Where the Scriptures say that God is close to the brokenhearted, that is not just a proverb, that is real. And so when you stand close to the brokenhearted you meet God. It's we who get the blessing. We think we are doing something good for somebody else, by volunteering or writing a check, for example - and we are - but it flips around. That's where you meet the living God. I view the book as the chance to share that realization that I have experienced and invite other people into that kind of joy.

Q. What are your plans as you work to expand MBB?
A. First of all I want to help educate people about extreme poverty and how it hits women and children the hardest and how small interventions can really lift families up.

I agree with economist Jeffrey Sachs who believes in ending world poverty. He believes we can reduce extreme poverty, but people cannot do it on their own: they need aid and they need intervention. Once they get up to poverty they can pull themselves up with their boot straps, but from extreme poverty they just can't - they have no resources and they're just too vulnerable. People in extreme poverty need help to get on the ladder.

With MBB we are doing two things: we are educating girls and we are funding small entrepreneurial projects that women themselves design - displaced women, for example, refugees - going back to their village. We talk with them and ask, "What do you need? You can do something to get yourself up to the first rung on this ladder."

Q. What are your goals?
A. I have this dream - I don't know if it will ever come to pass - that every Catholic school kid in America would donate to Mercy Beyond Borders once a year. I don't care if it is one dollar each, it doesn't matter. Imagine if everybody did that, how many we could connect with. Eventually it wouldn't be only Sudan, but also Haiti, Cambodia and lots of places where extreme poverty exists. Kids would be helping kids.

There's a school in Bakersfield where one of the lay teachers told her fifth grade class about what I do, and I went there, brought pictures and spoke. They raised a couple thousand dollars because they cared. I went back to show them what their contribution last year did and they raised $4,000 during the month of March this year. When I went to Sudan last year I brought post cards written by the kids from Bakersfield, and took pictures from Sudan of the children reading them.

There's such a connection now between those children. If everybody gave a little bit, we could transform the lives of women and children who are really suffering.