Local girl’s voice debuts on popular prayer app

MOORHEAD — It was a big moment for a small girl who’d landed a small part in a big production.

“Our sweet little Josie got the opportunity to play a small part in a big story as a voice actress,” began the Nov. 19 Facebook post of Robert “Bob” Noel, explaining that his youngest, age 11, had made it into the world’s top prayer app, Hallow, in its “Saints Alive” podcast, helping tell the story of St. Cecilia.

When asked the moment of Josie’s entry on the recording later, without hesitation, Bob responded: “26:30.” The episode can be found here.

St. Cecilia, a Christian virgin martyr who was born and died in the third century, is the patroness of music and musicians. One of several virgin martyrs named in the Canon of the Mass in the Latin church, she’s also believed to be the first whose body was found incorrupt.

The series, designed to teach children about saints by depicting their stories in a radio-theater format, launched three years ago and recently joined the Hallow lineup.

In the episode, Josie voices a young girl encountering St. Cecilia.

“Why do you have dirt all over your dress when you’re so pretty?” Josie, as the fictional girl, asks Cecilia.

“Well, this is what love asked of me today,” Cecilia answers.

“Why would love do that?” Josie asks.

“Because love sees things through,” Cecilia responds. “True love loves until the very end.”

In all, only four of the original seven lines created for Josie made the final cut, but outside the story of a saint’s love for Jesus, we find a father’s love for his daughter.

How it all began

Bob, formation associate for the Crookston Diocese’s Office of Missionary Discipleship, said a few years ago, Melissa Hund-Cerna, youth ministry coordinator for his parish, St. Joseph’s in Moorhead, told him about a new podcast for kids.

At the time, he was preparing for the diocese’s annual youth conference and had heard about a speaker from Colorado who was passionate about the Eucharist, which was to be a theme of the rally. “It turns out that it was the same guy who was one of the co-producers of the ‘Saints Alive’ podcast,” he said.

A few months later, the Saints Alive podcast producer, Tanner Kalina, and his wife, Ali, came to Minnesota to speak at the youth rally. Bob and Josie had been “binge-listening to the Saints Alive podcasts — some of the programs many times over,” Bob said, as a bedtime routine.

After the rally in Erskine, Minnesota, the couple drove back to Moorhead with Bob, who was to drive them to the airport the next morning. Bob shared with them how much Josie loved the series, and how they’d listened to all the episodes multiple times.

“Tanner said he wanted to meet her,” Bob recounted. So, the next morning, on their way to the airport, they stopped at St. Joseph’s Elementary. Bob had Josie called down to the office.

“She was surprised and a little star-struck meeting Tanner and Ali,” he said. “Tanner was excited to tell Josie that Ali was the voice actress who played the part of Saint Therese,” Josie’s favorite saint. “At that point, Tanner asked Josie if she would like to be a voice actress on an upcoming episode. Josie was beaming.”

“Saints Alive”

Speaking from Colorado, Tanner shared that he and the two friends who launched the podcast were “astonished at the hunger of families out there for these stories,” and how quickly it spread.

The momentum only grew after Hallow brought them on board. Not only is the Hallow app the top prayer app in the world, he said, but the Saints Alive series is also in the top 1 percent.

After meeting Josie, Tanner contacted Bob, sharing that he’d written a children’s part for Josie in the upcoming episode about Saint John Paul II. With a tight timeline, Bob set out to record Josie from home, but the quality did not match production standards.

As an olive branch, Tanner offered Josie a part in an upcoming episode about Saint Cecilia.

“When writing St. Cecilia’s story, I made sure to write in a little girls’ role,” he said. “Honestly, the spike we saw in this episode was huge, so it was a happy accident. This was a redemption role for Josie, and she killed it. It was great.”

Tanner also loved meeting Josie in person earlier, he said, calling it “super cute” to be introduced to one of the podcast’s top fans.

With the St. Cecilia episode being a second chance for Josie, Bob said, he wanted to make sure Josie wasn’t disappointed again.

“So I called a friend, Daron Selvig, a professional voice talent, and asked him if he could help me save my reputation with my daughter,” Bob said. “He graciously came over the next day with his advanced equipment, recorded Josie and saved me!”

Enter the media man

Daron Selvig, a previous anchor for Valley News Live who now owns a business recording voiceovers and narrations nationwide, said when Bob reached out to see if he could help engineer the recording, he was glad to take part.

“I have some portable recording gear for when I travel, so I brought that over to their house,” he said, adding that he wanted Josie to be as comfortable as possible.

“She was fantastic,” said Daron, the father of three daughters. “Bob is such a great dad. He was so patient during the recording session, encouraging Josie. He acted as sort of the director of the piece.”

They tried recording in a few different rooms to get the right sound. “Bob was so focused and soft-spoken, and Josie was so patient,” Daron said. “It was a joy to watch this relationship, and how they were teaming up to create something that’s so lovely.”

According to Tanner, podcasts can play a huge role in enhancing the faith. “We’ve been losing the cultural role, and have allowed other narratives to become mainstream,” he said. “With mediums like podcasting and social media, we’re able to increase the quantity of faith-based voices.”

These new mediums, he added, renew hope in reclaiming the culture, “through a flood of voices proclaiming truth.”

“Josie has always had a beautiful heart for Jesus,” Bob said, “so playing a little girl talking to Saint Cecilia about sacrificial love was very fitting.” He said they love “Saints Alive” because “it tells the stories of saints engagingly. And these saints have become virtuous role models for Josie and many others.”

Josie said she read her lines off of the script, and that it was “cool” to listen to herself in her favorite app once it was all finished.

Despite St. Therese being her favorite, Josie said, “it was nice to do a podcast about (St. Cecilia) so I could learn more about what she did as a saint and who she was.”

Bob said that while he’s been especially reflective fathering his youngest, “All four of our kids…have taught me in a beautiful way what it means to be childlike; to have that beautiful relationship with Jesus from a child’s eyes,” he said.

This experience, which started as a favorite bedtime routine between a father and daughter and led to them being involved in a top-notch podcast production, has now opened new dreams in their hearts.

“Josie and I are planning to create a podcast about prayer,” Bob said, adding with a chuckle, “we just need better equipment.”

[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on Dec. 8, 2024.]