Missionary Experiences – Page 31 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

My First Experiences in the Central African Republic

2 May, 2020 by Alberto de la Portilla

I feel like an heir of the prophetic vision of St. Daniel Comboni wanting to “Save Africa by means of Africa,” whose vision has now been expanded to Africa saving the world. The Lord tells us: “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” (John 20:21)

On the morning of Sunday, March 15, that promised to be a beautiful day I arrived in my mission land with my luggage, the Republic of Central Africa. I have no words to describe how I felt in the utmost depths of my being at that time. I landed in Bangui, after a long period of formation that included a community experience in Kinshasa. It was for me a moment of heartfelt emotions, on the one hand I felt the joy of being in mission, on the other hand I felt the pain of separation in leaving behind the country of my birth, the land of my ancestors, my family, my work, my community, my friends, etc… I still had in mind my last face to face meeting with my father the night of my departure and then this morning my mother who accompanied me to the airport together with the chaplain of the CLM of Congo, Fr. Celestine Ngore and our coordinator of the CLM in Kinshasa, Mr. Gerard Kambaji.

By then I knew that I belonged to a new family, I had been adopted by a new land and was happy to know that the Lord was waiting for me, here in the CAR, and that here I had new brothers and sisters.

The adventure begins

When I arrived in Bangui I was well received by Fr. Claude-Bernard, mccj who had come to pick me up and take me to the community where I was going to live. When we reached there, he showed me the place and told me that I needed to be quarantined there for 14 days to check on the coronavirus. That is when I realized that I had reached Bangui at a time marked by the pandemic of Covid-19. This was being a particular difficult time for the Comboni delegation in the CAR, because the first Covid 19 case in the country had been the one of a Comboni Missionary who had tested positive upon his return from Italy. Thus, his confreres who had been in contact with him when he returned to Bangui, were quarantined for 15 days to check on them. In this context, the government adopted preventive measured to limit the risk of contagion in a country where the health structures capable of fully facing this pandemic are few. So, every individual entering the CAR must be quarantined for 15 days.

At first it was difficult for me, and I had moments of loneliness in a house I hardly knew. But even though I was physically alone, I felt united to thousands of people who are isolated in this world, prisoners unjustly held in their cells, sick people without help, marginalized people living alone, plus I was receiving supporting and life-giving messages from all over through the social media. I felt strengthened by the words of our founder that “the works of God are born and grow at the foot of the Cross.” And since it was Lent, I took this opportunity to enter more deeply into this mystery and to offer my mission to the Lord and spend some time listening to him. And finally, like Comboni, I thanked Jesus for the crosses.

Discovering the CAR

At the end of my quarantine I did not show any sign of the virus, and could get out and meet the others, but always following the safe distance rules. So that, together with the fathers we started the legal steps for my papers. I could finally see Bangui, the monuments in the various squares of the city, like the Martyrs, the Peace monument and those of Bartolomé Boganda and Oumar Bongo Odima, just to name a few. It is a city with a rich culture. The trees were covered with dust because this is the dry season lasting six months. I could see and listen to the locals, and it was nice to listen to this new language, and speak gently and beautifully a language that uses also Lingala words we speak at home. Aside from these few words, it was also difficult for me, because I could not understand anything else in this language that we back home call Sango, where Sango means a minister of religion, while here it is the name of the language. So, I realized that I have to learn it all even though I thought we would have more similarities between the CAR and the DRC, because they border each other and we share several tribes. I concluded that I had to learn everything without exception, because Africa is one but varies according to the culture of each country.

At this time, while the entire world is affected by the coronavirus, the CAR authorities have declared a health emergency and have invited people to isolate themselves and strictly forbidden the gathering of more that 15 people. In view of this, they have closed the schools, the churches, the bars, and all sporting events or events of any type. But around here, people in general do not respect the order of the authorities to stay apart. I am realizing that it is difficult for the majority of the people who are poor and live on a day-to-day basis as we say around here. So they need to go out to sell or to look for food for the family. Here is where I realized the presence of the Lord’s grace and of divine protection.

For the time being I am staying in Bangui to keep on learning the language and other things that will be useful in my mission of Mongoumba. Our founder, San Daniel Comboni, asks for the formation of persons who will be holy and capable. During this time of preparation, I keep on being patient, open and listening attentively with the attitude of a child. I as you to pray for me and I will not forget to do the same for you.

Enoch, CLM

The epidemic of coronavirus as an impulse to act!

29 April, 2020 by Alberto de la Portilla

I would like to tell you about how God works when Satan tries to destroy on the example of my mission.

As we know, coronavirus is slowly reaching everywhere. Some people believe that God wants to punish the world for sins or has sent a plague on us to convert us. I do not believe that. However, I believe that God can bring good out of every evil. The epidemic obviously destroys, kills and is generally bad, but I think everyone will admit that it also has many advantages – it unites us, rebuilds relationships in the family and more. We could definitely multiply the examples. And this is God’s work. Not the epidemic, but all the good that came from it.

The coronavirus reaching Ethiopia pushed us to action. Last year, I founded “Barkot” Children of Ethiopia Foundation. Together with my husband, we have been running a children’s center in Awassa since October last year. The project assumes the gradual rehabilitation of children and the pursuit of their reintegration into family and society. From the beginning we run open activities to which we were inviting street children. We hired a few employees who were going out into the street to encourage them to participate in it. And in fact a lot of them came from the beginning. We organized recreational, sports, educational, psychological, artistic and other classes.

The next step was to choose regular participants, contact their families and extend the program especially for them, including meals. The third step was to receive the most persistent ones into the center with full accommodation, to prepare them directly for returning home and to school.

But … there was always a but. We were worried whether we would have enough funds for this. In addition, I went to Poland to give birth to our daughter. Except of working for our organization, my husband has another job and, apart from coordinating the work of the center, he could not sit there constantly. In addition, he was going to Poland for a month. So we waited until I returned to Ethiopia. Then more problems – sometimes the police catch the street children at night and place them in collective shelters. If we start the second step, it is not known if our children will disappear overnight (which unfortunately has already happened). Our budget still seemed insufficient to provide some stability for a long time. So how could we work? I noticed that even among the employees there was a certain resignation, lack of motivation, they did not work with such commitment as at the beginning …

And finally the coronavirus appeared in the country. The government closed schools and began to introduce restrictions. For us, conducting classes for children coming directly from the street, especially from the most crowded places, all our activities were put into question. Many organizations stopped working. What to do? Shall we close the center until it’s all over? Then we would have to pay the house rent and workers’ salaries. We would not avoid constant costs that are not so small.

Then we got the idea (I believe that it was from the Holy Spirit) to choose the children to whom we would give shelter during the epidemic. We started preparations, shopping, searching for funds via the Internet. We have become active on Facebook, people have started to be interested in us again and make donations. We have already received seven boys and of course we do not want to keep them only in the center, but work with them so that after some time they can return to their families and start school. Everyone has regained their willingness to work. We have set weekly program and specific plans on what to do with children. A positive change can already be seen from our boys. In total, we are preparing to have ten of them. The coronavirus was still not found in Awassa (and we hope it won’t!)

We have overcome this transition step and I think it is better like this. We needed such an impulse as in this case coronavirus to trust God again that He will lead us and give us what we need to implement His plan. We don’t have money for a long time, but we believe in God’s action and human goodness. After all, our foundation is called “Barkot”, which in English means “He blesses it”.

Magda Soboka, CLM in Ethiopia

The EMAUS Covenant Community

14 April, 2020 by Alberto de la Portilla

Happy Easter to you friends!

Today, Easter is both a celebration of the gift of spiritual rebirth and at the same time a reminder of the constant renewal of life here on earth.

We live in a wonderful but deeply wounded and wounding world that is at times uncaring, unforgiving, cruel, and devoid of second chances. Easter offers the assurance that the many difficulties and challenges that threaten to overwhelm us will be overcome.

Jesus says to frightened disciples, “Do not be afraid.” To us he says, “Do not be afraid.” Whatever it is that causes you to fear, Jesus the risen Christ will be with you and will go ahead of you and continue to be with you. He offers you joy and peace, forgiveness and hope. Most of all he offers you himself. You need not fear. He has overcome the world. As a community, we are involved in several activities in order to reach out to the society with gospel values and this has brought hope, restored broken relationships, and transformed many lives for Christ within Uganda and beyond.

Emmaus covenant community members apart from spiritual programs, we also do some other activities for communal and self-sustainability in order to provide essential needs to their families:

We do Poultry farming and we are currently dealing in broilers.

We have parenting workshop for community members

We minister to the married and singles in the community

We have Family cell groups

Next to this we minister to children, religious and lay people.

To all our dear friends and partners in the Vineyard of Jesus Christ our Lord, we wish you hope, faith, love, and peace of the risen Lord.

Emmaus Covenant Community Leadership Team

We, the Emmaus Covenant Community are a community of lay faithful. We are called to be an oasis of gospel life expressed in the love of God and mutual love for one another so that the gospel of Christ will shine forth from them. Consequently, Emmaus Covenant community by its very lifestyle is evangelizing. Called by Jesus and touched by His grace each member of the community aspires to attain growth in human and spiritual maturity.

Richard. CLM Uganda

The General Chapter and the ministeriality

9 March, 2020 by Alberto de la Portilla

In the view of Evangelii Gaudium (EG), the mission of the Church and all its ministers within it are directed towards building up the Kingdom of God, striving to create room in our world where all people, especially the underprivileged and the excluded, may experience the salvation of the Risen Christ. The ministers, therefore, assume a role of crucial importance as a place of encounter between humanity and Word and Spirit in history. (Bro. Alberto Parise, in the picture)

THE GENERAL CHAPTER AND MINISTERIALITY

Bro. Alberto Parise

There are times in history that mark epochal movements or transitions from one socio-cultural system to another, with a high degree of discontinuity. The period in which Comboni lived was certainly one of these historical moments. It was the time of the industrial revolution, the result of the great leap that science and theology were making in science as well as in the fields of finance and politics. The Church found itself on the defensive, faced with the so-called “modernism” that it perceived as a threat. It was a Church under siege, politically and culturally; and in its resistance, it ran the risk of self-referentiality. And yet, precisely at that difficult time, it experienced a great rebirth: among the contradictions and social evils that emerged with the new industrial capitalist economic system, there also emerged a force for social apostolate, through the work of the laity and of a large number of new religious institutes. The colonial movement – a response to the politico-economic logic and to the ideology of competing nation states – on the other hand, was accompanied by a deep cultural interest in exploration, things exotic and the spirit of adventure. However, there was also the rebirth of a new missionary movement towards distant lands and peoples. The Church was entering a new epoch with deep spiritual renewal – as is attested to by the spirituality of the Sacred Heart that characterised those times – bringing about a new missionary model.

The XVIII General Chapter was celebrated in an analogous epoch for the Church. The discernment of the Chapter was harmonised with the interpretation of that turn of events which Pope Francis had written in Evangelii Gaudium (EG): his was a theological reading of the new epoch that opens, in pastoral practice, to a new missionary impetus. New in the sense that it abandoned the paradigm we were used to: a mission based on a geographical model in which the protagonists were “special units” of missionaries who were real pioneers, whose role was to found local Churches. The reality of globalisation and the dramatic socio-environmental crisis of our time – a consequence of a prevailing unsustainable model of development that has brought us close to the point of no return – require a renewed approach to evangelisation. After all, we just have to look at our Comboni situation to realise that, in practice, the model of the past has been discarded. For example, the system of ‘sending’ provinces (in the northern hemisphere) and provinces (in the southern hemisphere) that ‘receive’ missionaries, no longer corresponds to what is really happening, as it’s the case with the idea that the countries of the south are for “evangelisation” and those of the north for “mission promotion”. We can now see the urgent need for mission promotion, for example, in Africa and – as also stated by the Chapter – of the mission in Europe.

Evangelii Gaudium therefore proposes a new paradigm of mission. No longer simply geographical, but existential. The Church is called to overcome its own referentiality and to go out to all the human peripheries where people suffer exclusion and live with all the hardship of economic inequality, social injustice and impoverishment. All these situations are no longer a dysfunctional aspect of the economic system but a requirement for the system itself to prosper and continue. The mission becomes a paradigm of all pastoral action and the local Church is its subject. So, what is the role of the missionary institutes? It is that of animating the local Churches to live out their mandate of being missionary, Churches that go out to the existential peripheries. It is a matter of proceeding in communion within realities characterised by diversity and pluralism, creating together a common perspective that values the differences and “conquers” them, without destroying them, creating unity on a higher level. These journeys are characterised by closeness to the poorest, by service and the ability to proclaim the Gospel with the essentials of the kerygma both by word and by a way of life. Pope Francis is relaunching the vison of the Church of the Second Vatican Council, as “the sacrament, or the sign and instrument of intimate union with God and of the unity of the whole human race”. In our new world formed by a digital revolution and the globalisation of the markets of financial capitalism, the Church is called to gather a ‘people’ who are able to go beyond the confines of belonging and walk towards the Kingdom of God. Then the Christian testimony to the Risen Lord will be productive and the Church, too, will grow by attraction and not because of proselytising.

Today, the epoch of digital revolution is a time of great missionary opportunities, just as the time of the industrial revolution was for Comboni. Since we are speaking of a new paradigm, the challenge lies in thinking, structuring and training ourselves accordingly. The first step is to recognise the grace of the Comboni charism which is very relevant and made to measure for the new paradigm of mission. In the first place we have the central idea of “regenerating Africa with Africa”, a concise image that recounts a most complex and articulated story: there is the idea of generating a ‘people’ capable of building up an alternative society, in harmony with the action of the Spirit. The proclamation of the Gospel helps to bring to completion those “seeds of the Word” already present in the cultures and spirituality of the people. Comboni also stressed the importance of this work being “catholic”, that is to say, universal: far removed from self-reference, he saw himself as an integral part of a much greater and broader missionary movement with a variety of gifts and charisms. He saw his role as that of an animator who made an untiring effort to move the conscience of the Pastors of the Church concerning their missionary responsibility so that Africa’s hour might not pass in vain” (RL 9). In the view of EG, the mission of the Church and all its ministers within it are directed towards building up the Kingdom of God, striving to create room in our world where all people, especially the underprivileged and the excluded, may experience the salvation of the Risen Christ.

The ministers, therefore, assume a role of crucial importance as a place of encounter between humanity and Word and Spirit in history. It is a fecund encounter, as Comboni well understood. This is why, in his Plan, he envisaged a series of small theological and scientific universities along the coasts of Africa, to train ministers in various fields who would then spread out into the interior, to bring about the growth of communities imbued with the spirit of the Gospel, capable of social transformation, as the models of Malbes and Gezira show us.

In the spirit of the Chapter, the requalification along ministerial lines of our missionary service requires, as Comboni realized, a new “structure” of the mission that sustains and fosters it:

= a ministerial requalification of our commitment, with a development plan that is shared and made in communion, for specific pastoral priorities, in accordance with the continental urgencies. During the Chapter, it emerged that, on the one hand, we are present in these “frontiers” of mission while, on the other hand, we often lack a contextual approach to the human groups we accompany;
= collaborative ministry in journeys of communion. We are still subject to practices and ways of operating that are too individualistic and fragmented;
= re-thinking our structures while seeking greater simplicity, more sharing and the ability to welcome others, so as to be closer to the people, more human and happier;
= the reorganisation of the circumscriptions. Amalgamation does not find its justification only in the shortage of personnel, but rather, it has a value in relation to the passage from a geographical to a ministerial model which renders it necessary to be connected, to work as a network and to share resources and pathways;
= the reorganisation of formation to develop the necessary expertise in the various specific pastoral fields.

In brief, as the Chapter Acts state, “the growing awareness of a new paradigm of mission spurs us on to reflect and re-organize our activities along ministerial lines.” (CA 2015, No. 12). As invited by Pope Francis (EG 33), the Chapter has indicated the path of pastoral conversion, abandoning the criteria: “as we have always done” and setting in motion a series of action-reflections to reconsider the goals, structures, the manner and method of evangelization (CA 2015, No. 44.2-3). (Bro. Alberto Parise)

Official visit of Fr. Tesfaye Tadesse and Fr. Pietro Ciuciulla to Uganda

6 March, 20206 March, 2020 by Alberto de la Portilla

The year 2020 has started with the visit to the province by the Superior General, Fr. Tesfaye Tadesse and one of the General Councilors, Fr. Pietro Ciuciulla. It has been a great moment of communion. They had also a meeting with the Comboni Lay Missionaries in their house at Solent Avenue-Kampala (in the picture).

From the 6^th January to the 8^th February 2020, the two visitors met confreres individually and all communities. It was also a moment of meeting Bishops of the dioceses where the Comboni Missionaries are serving and some other religious families with which we work closely. The two confreres visited different projects geared at human promotion with which we are engaged. In all the communities, the Superior General and Fr. Pietro Ciuciulla had a message of encouragement, acknowledging the tremendous work the Comboni Missionaries are doing in Uganda and inviting us to be focused on labouring for the Kingdom of God despite the challenge of a reduction in personnel.

They had a meeting with the Comboni Lay Missionaries in their house at Solent Avenue-Kampala. The visitors invited the province to be grateful to God for the forthcoming beatification of Fr. Giuseppe Ambrosoli, Mccj.

Scheduled for the 22 November 2020 at Kalongo (Archdiocese of Gulu), the beatification will be a moment of celebrating the work of God’s grace in a man who humbly and lovingly sought nothing other than caring for the sick. One of the moments that marked the end of the visit was the inauguration of a small project, Limone Medical Centre, situated at the former premises of Leadership Magazine. The facility designed to accommodate confreres who need special care as they follow their medical treatment in big medical facilities in and around Kampala. It will have an outpatient service open to the public. It was a moment of joy to have the Superior General officially opening this place on Friday 7^th February 2020.

The province is grateful to the General Council for this moment which we will always treasure.