Sister Miedal Stone
Current ministry location – Monrovia
Mary Ellen Stone was born August 3, 1934 in Los Angeles, CA to Margaret E. (Kearney) Stone and Joseph J. Stone. She had one sister: Dorothy and two brothers: Charles and Bernard. She graduated from Fremont Jr. High School, Pomona, CA in 1953.
Mary Ellen entered the Maryknoll Sisters Congregation February 1, 1954 at the novitiate in Valley Park, MO from Pomona, CA. She professed First Vows September 8, 1956 at Valley Park and Final Vows September 8, 1962 at the Center in NY. At the time of her First Vows, she was given the religious name, Sister Miedal which she has maintained.
After two years at Maryknoll Teachers College at the Center, she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Mount. St. Vincent College, Riverdale, NY in 1964, then was certified as a medical technician at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Kansas City, MO, in 1965.
Sister Miedal’s first overseas mission assignment was to Hong Kong in 1965. Her varied ministries in Hong Kong included being supervisor of the clinical laboratory at Our Lady of Maryknoll Hospital in Kowloon, where she was also a lab technician and teacher at the Maryknoll Sisters School.
When Bishop John Baptist Wu invited the Maryknoll Sisters to staff a hostel for the elderly, financed by Caritas and the government, in a Hong Kong public housing high-rise apartment building, Sister Miedal Stone was one of four Maryknoll Sisters who responded. The Ying Shui hostel, one floor of the high-rise apartment building, was opened in 1983 and became home to the four Sisters and 97 elderly residents.
Like the elderly, the Maryknoll Sisters who staffed the hostel lived together in one room that was 10 feet by 24 feet, with bunk beds and simple facilities, where their elderly neighbors dropped in sometimes for a cup of tea or a hug. Each room of three or four people was treated as a separate home and the corridors as “the streets of the village.” Individuals observed their own religion, with Catholics and Protestants being a minority among a largely Buddhist population in the hostel.
Sister Miedal wrote home, “Our days are filled with hard work, loud conversations, myriad requests for this and that, tears and laughter. The best part is to hear the laughter and teasing going on among the residents, seeing the mah jong players going full tilt in Room 303.”
“I’ve had umpteen ambulance rides and various times I have been the only family member to sign the necessary documents and perform the funeral rites for our residents,” Sister Miedal wrote.
Regarding her many years of service to the elderly, Sister Miedal shares, “I was once told I should work with young people as the future of the world is with them, but it is more enjoyable with the elderly as the present is with them.”
When the Caritas home celebrated its 15th anniversary in 1998, Sister Miedal, who had lived there since its foundation, bid farewell to her elderly friends. The Sisters had become beloved members of the community. Living among the elderly was a deliberate attempt at a “dialogue of life,” sharing the joys and sorrows of those the Sisters sought to serve.
After leaving the Ying Shui hostel in 1998, she had a renewal period in the States resting, visiting family, making a retreat and then began to share her joyful spirit with a variety of services for retired Maryknoll Sisters living at the Sisters’ Center in New York.
Sister Miedal returned to Hong Kong in 2003 and began volunteer pastoral care ministry at two hospitals. She lived with another Maryknoll Sister in St. Jerome’s Parish in Hung Shui Kiu in the New Territories, very close to the border with mainland China. For 42 years, Sister Miedal had truly made her home in Hong Kong and China.
In December 2013, Sister Miedal took up residence at the Maryknoll Sisters Convent in Monrovia, CA, in retirement, where she takes care of the vestments and other materials needed for Mass and services in the chapel at Monrovia.