The Poor of Jesus Christ is a religious community founded in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2001. It is dedicated to serving the poor and embodying the teaching of Jesus Christ. They minister to the homeless, providing essential items like food and hygiene, and host Eucharistic processions to bring Jesus to those in need. Their mission emphasizes love and service, reflecting the Gospel message that Jesus exemplified with humility and compassion.

Sister Joy is the daughter of Ron and Allison Rice, parishioners of St. Martin de Porres Parish in Dripping Springs. She participated in the youth group, summer camps, and mission work trips as a teenager and graduated from Dripping Springs High School in 2015. She attended college at the University of Texas in Austin where she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, with a chemistry minor, and a certificate in pre-health professions. While discerning whether to pursue a medical career or a religious vocation, she moved back to her parents’ home in 2019.

Time for discernment

Sister Joy found the community of the Poor of Jesus Christ while reaching out to various religious communities. During this time, she received spiritual direction from the PJC community as well as Father Charlie Garza and Father Justin Nguyen, priests of the Diocese of Austin.

In the fall of 2020 in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Father Nguyen, pastor of St. Martin de Porres Parish in Dripping Springs, asked Sister Joy to serve as the director of religious education at St. Martin de Porres and to facilitate the online faith formation classes.

In that role, she worked with many volunteer teachers and got to know the parish’s children and their parents. She also continued seeking more information from the PJC community, and during the summer of 2021 she attended Come and See, where she spent a week living with the sisters. She came back convinced she was called to join the order and officially entered as a formandee in 2022 at the Mission House in San Gabriel, California.

Sister Joy entered formation with two other women, and for the next four years, they journeyed together with the community in California, Brazil and Canada. They moved from formandees, to aspirants, to postulants, to novitiates as they learned more about the community and its work. The three women returned to the Canadian Mission House in January 2025 for their apostolic novitiate year during which they actively engaged in missionary work and deepened their faith and commitment before taking their first vows. Every year, the sisters renew their simple vows, and after a period of six to eight years of taking simple vows, the religious sister is invited to take her perpetual vows in the community.

The Vows

Along with the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, the sisters take a vow of availability. Through this vow, they seek to imitate Mary in that attitude of total availability she had toward Elizabeth: “During those days Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.” (Lk 1:39-40)

Sister Joy’s vows ceremony was held in Kansas City, Kansas. A large group of family, friends and parishioners from St. Martin de Porres were present as well as Father Nguyen, Father Scott Fyall and Father Matthew Jewell (priests of the Diocese of Austin), who concelebrated the Mass following the ceremony.