She was in her late 20s—working as a paralegal at a Columbia, Maryland, law firm, dating, planning on a future of marriage and a family. It should have been a great life, but Liz Langmead felt that something was missing.

“Certainly entering religious life was in my mind and heart, but I didn’t want to listen to it,” she recalls. “Finally I reached a point where I knew I had to look into it, because the feeling just wouldn’t go away.”

She met the Mission Helpers at an Archdiocese of Baltimore gathering of religious communities. “There was something about them,” she says, “their spirit and their involvement with people in the margins.”

She joined the Community in 1985. Those “people in the margins” have shaped her ministry. Her first missions were in Baltimore at Our Daily Bread, a hot meal program, and My Sister’s Place, a drop-in day center for homeless women and children.

In Arizona, Sister Liz worked in youth ministry and outreach programs to depressed areas at the Mexican border, and she served four years as director of youth ministry at Annunciation Parish in Altamonte Springs, Florida.

She served as Chaplain of the New England Medical Center for three years and was director of the Mary Frances Cunningham Ministries in Baltimore. Later, with the Hezekiah Movement, her ministry focused on women with addictions, and at the Dundalk Youth Services she worked with troubled young people and their families.

In 2007, she began working with the women of Marian House, a refuge where homeless women, and their children, are empowered to move from dependence to independence,

Sister Liz holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Towson University and a master’s degree in Pastoral Counseling from Loyola University Maryland. She has also done theological studies at St. Mary’s Seminary and University and is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor.

Sister Liz served as MHSH Treasurer from 2008 to 2016 and as Vice President from 2012 to 2016. She was elected President in April 2016 and again in 2020.