Volunteer's actions are evidence of her faith

Intermountain Catholic

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After teaching math for more than 20 years, Vivienne Faurot began visiting the sick at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo. ?The patients have made me a better Christian. I have learned what it truly means to love and care for the stranger, and the grace to accept death.? Her ministry has led her to apply to the clinical pastoral education program to become a hospital chaplain. IC photo by Christine Young

PROVO — "Vivienne Faurot’s faith and love for the patients she visits is evidenced by her caring actions," said Steve Lineback, Utah Valley Regional Medical Center (UVRMC) chaplain. "She visits with a patient, prays with them, and then goes home and keeps them in her prayers.

"Vivienne often finds articles, information on the Internet, or helps them become baptized," said Lineback. "She feels with compassion the pain of others and acts to sooth the sick. We at UVRMC are all grateful to have Vivienne in our lives. She inspires each of us to be more loving, more conscientious, more thoughtful, and more edifying of those who are suffering."

Faurot, a member of St. Francis of Assisi Parish, Orem, lives in Springville. She said she has been a eucharistic minister in various parishes, but was never involved in hospital ministry until five years ago.

"I started volunteering at the hospital when Bishop George Niederauer, then bishop of the Diocese of Salt Lake City, now Archbishop of San Francisco, re-assigned Father Shouraiah Pudota from St. Francis to San Felipe Parish, Wendover. Fr. Michael Sciumbato became our pastor in Orem, and he made the announcement at Mass that he needed volunteers to take communion to the sick. So I said I could help, and trained to become a Level 2 Eucharistic Minister.

"It was May of 2004, and I remember the first day. Alden Brown, a retired U.S. Army chaplain, was the chaplain at UVRMC who showed me around. All I could think of was how am I ever going to figure this place out."

Faurot started out visiting on Mondays, and now visits three days a week. She would talk for a while with the patients, and pray with them. But some of them were Latino and at first she did not know how to pray in Spanish, so she bought a Spanish dictionary.

"One of the first patients I saw was Rosa, who was in ICU and spoke no English. She had all these tubes in her," said Faurot. "I went into the room and saw I could not do anything for her. So I left and went on to the next patient. But I kept thinking about Rosa because that wasn’t right. That was no way to treat her, to just go in and pop out."

So the next day, Faurot went back to visit Rosa, held her hand and just looked at her and prayed quietly.

"I learned from Rosa," said Faurot. "I learned later she probably had Alzheimer’s disease. The next time I saw her, I swore she recognized me. I would just sit with her completely unaware of time passing."

"Vivienne goes way beyond what is normal and listens to the Lord guiding her," said Lineback. "She knows how to bless the sick. Last week she attended a family in grief at the loss of a young father. When she heard that the deceased father dearly loved St. Joseph, Vivienne went to the hospital librarian and procured a picture of St. Joseph for the family. As the family waited for the priest to arrive, she calmed them with love."

"Then there was baby Natali," said Faurot. "Baby Natali was born prematurely with a systemic yeast infection she got from her mother. Her mother was on my list to visit, and she spoke no English. Her mother and father told me their baby was very sick, and they asked me to go see her in the neonatal intensive care unit. Natalie was so red and swollen. The nurse and the doctor looked very serious. I stood out of their way and started praying for her. I asked if she had been baptized and they said no."

Faurot went back to speak with the parents. She spoke with them through a cleaning woman who interpreted for her. They were reluctant to have their baby baptized. So Faurot started a prayer chain. She called her mother, her mother-in-law, two sisters, and also asked for guidance from the Holy Spirit to help convince the really young couple their baby needed to be baptized.

"I was so convinced the grace Natali would receive from the baptism would help her fight the infection," said Faurot. "I spoke with the nurses and found out the parents wanted to have a big baptismal celebration at the church. I told them I was from St. Francis, and that seemed to click with them and that something else could be done later. They finally agreed.

"I was so nervous because I had never baptized anyone before," said Faurot. "I got the holy water and the baptismal card that was in Spanish. Natali’s parents were there, and one of her aunt’s was there. It was amazing despite all her tubes. This little girl, who was so very sick, got better and went home with a feeding tube. A year later she was great and doing well. I know it was the baptism."

Faurot, grew up in Los Angeles, and moved to Oregon to begin a doctorate program in math. It was there she met and married her husband. They moved to New York where she began a 10-year track position in mathematics education at State University New York at the Courtland campus. There she had her son Gregory, who is now 11. She decided it was too hard to teach and be a good mother, so they decided to move to Kansas City, Mo., where her husband taught at a small Catholic liberal education college for five years.

In July 2002, they moved to Springville. Both she and her husband are math professors at Utah Valley State College in Provo.