An inspiring exploration of how happiness and holiness can exist in the midst of poverty and illness.

Two lay women who have chosen to live among the poor in East Africa, one a Maryknoll lay mission, and the other, a New York attorney who left her law practice to become a lay mission with the Franciscans minister to the poor in Kenya.

Slavin first met Salvador when she was volunteering as a lawyer working in a justice and peace program in Kenya. Slavin was intrigued by the well-known phrase "Blessed are the poor." After approaching this seeming paradox through unrewarding library research, she decided that she would join Salvador in her ministry to AIDS orphans to try to understand how the poor can be "blessed." This account tells of their experiences as they worked together with the poor, primarily AIDS orphans, in the slums of Kenya. Photos will be included.