"We need to find what exactly is happening with the community in order to serve it better," she said in an Aug. 18 interview alongside Natalia Pellicano, Director of Ethnic Community Faith Formation and Missionary Discipleship.

Sister Elsa is part of a diocesan team that has been working directly with parishes with Hispanic communities to help them facilitate their own Encuentros. The team helps train leaders, who then lead small groups within the parish on five weeks of missionary activity. Every week the groups hold a meeting, and, after they "meditate the word of God and the reality of Catholic Hispanics in the U.S.," group members are sent out to evangelize in the communities.

After those five weeks, the individual groups are invited to come together as a parish community.

"The idea is that we can gather the community, no matter what group or charism you belong to or what age you are... and share a moment of joy and also get to know the reality of the parish," said Sister Elsa.

Pellicano added that "This was specifically made that pastors would gather members of each group and even include youth and young adults, and include people who don't come to church, so that they can actually see and understand how they can better serve the people that are in their surroundings and the people that are coming to their parish."

"It's been great because a lot of these groups have come together and have worked together in the parishes for this as one effort and seen that they're all bringing the word of Christ in their own charisma and unique way," she said.

The community writes a report on their needs, aspirations, and potential changes it may want made, and sends the report to the pastor. Reports and feedback are being compiled for the diocesan Encuentro, where suggestions will be made to support the Hispanic populations in the entirety of the archdiocese. Feedback there will be brought up to the regional Encuentro, and ultimately the national Encuentro, where the USCCB will offer suggestions and policies that will impact Hispanic communities across the U.S.

Pellicano predicts that the diocesan Encuentro, to be held in early 2018, will "allow us to know our diocese a lot better, so that we can offer better programs for faith formation, we can offer better evangelization methods," and we can bring Spanish-speaking priests to parishes with large Hispanic communities.

There will be a processing time for the Encuentros afterwards, but already, said Pellicano, "I feel that this is the closet the diocese has worked with the Hispanic community in many years."