DETROIT — One of the biggest influences on Martha Reyes’ ministry was getting to meet Mother Teresa while volunteering in India.

“It had a tremendous effect on me because it changed the outlook of my ministry,” said Reyes, who will speak at the 5th annual Archdiocese of Detroit Hispanic Women’s Conference on Oct. 20.

“What many people need are expressions of love,” said Reyes, a Catholic contemporary recording artist, speaker and author born in Puerto Rico but who now resides in Los Angeles. “And to feel wanted, and included, and respected,” she added.

Reyes, who works primarily among the Spanish-speaking community, has worked with Hispanic ministries in the U.S. and Latin America for more than 35 years. Her ministry takes her to Latin America at least once or twice a month, sometimes for 10-day periods; she is no stranger to traveling around the world for mission purposes.

Reyes worked as a volunteer with the Missionaries of Charity — Mother Teresa’s religious order — one month at a time on two separate occasions.

“I met [Mother Teresa] in different places and locations,” recalled Reyes, who said she didn’t know the sister well enough to have considered it a friendship, but that Mother Teresa “knew me and allowed me into some of her homes and chapels to pray with herself and the sisters.”

“It was an incredible privilege to be somehow close to her and her work when she was alive,” Reyes said. “Mother Teresa touched everything in her surroundings.”

Reyes said volunteering in the houses of the dying in Calcutta had a special effect on her.

“That was really inspiring and gave me a new perspective on evangelization. It gave me an experience of what real humility is all about: humility is accepting God’s will wherever he takes you, without boundaries or resistance.”

Today, Reyes uses what she learned from Mother Teresa’s ministry in her own mission to help the hurting women of today’s society.

“I use some of her teachings and talk to other women about who is the most beautiful woman I ever met, who is Mother Teresa,” said Reyes, who has ministered to Hispanic women of all ages and background. “Her gestures of love really healed people, and a mother’s gesture of love can heal her children and her husband.”

Reyes’ ministry focuses largely on helping women grow in self-esteem, heal from lies they have been told and heal from domestic abuse. She said the realm of healing women, especially Hispanic women and those in other minority groups, is something in which she operates on a daily basis.

Besides writing a book, “Jesus y la mujer herida” (“Jesus and the Hurting Woman”), which aims to bring about psychological and emotional healing, Reyes also takes part in the CEDIM (Centro de Education Integral Para la Mujer) center in California, an outreach of the Hosanna International Foundation, which Reyes helped found in 2006 to organize educational, artistic, cultural and human development programs and events for cross-cultural communities in Southern California.

Reyes said one of the challenges for women in the Catholic Hispanic community is for the rest of the Church to acknowledge what they can “bring to the table.” But, “there are very few differences in the needs from one part of the world or another,” she said.

She was especially inspired to continue her mission as a laywoman when she briefly met Pope John Paul II many years ago. As part of a choir that went to sing at the Vatican, the pope had approached her after they sang. He blessed her, and though brief, “to me it was also very significant.”

“He promoted that kind of work and encouraged people like me who have that kind of vision,” she said.