English – Page 129 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

Youth program in Daye

1 June, 2018 by Alberto de la Portilla

Last Saturday with some members of our Comboni Friends group, we went to Daye – one of the Combonis’ missions among Sidama people. We met there with youth leaders from different outstations, more than 50 of them came. The topic was based on Matthew’s gospel and parable about talents. There was small teaching about, testimony of Adela about her talents and how she uses them to serve others, and then time to work in small groups to discover and share which gifts God gave us and how can we use them.

Youth had many ideas about the talents they can use in the church (to lead groups, to teach, to sing or play keyboard in the choir, to help those who left the church to come back, to take care of widows and orphans…). And after this more serious part, there was some fun, which we called “Daye got talent!”. Youth in groups prepared short dramas based on different parables. They got really involved in it! And showed that they have acting talents too! 🙂
We hope that this meeting inspired them to discover their gifts and use them. Also for us, it was very joyful and enriching time.

Magda Plekan. CLM Ethiopia

Logbook of Simone from the RCA

31 May, 2018 by Alberto de la Portilla

Hi to everyone. How are you doing? I hope you are well. Here the rainy season has begun and, to move around, we could use Noah’s ark. When it rains in Mongoumba, everything stops (I believe the same happens throughout the RCA), the children and the teachers do not come to school, you do not see anyone around and we could sleep all day long, lulled by the sound of the rain, and think of you in Portugal, Poland, Italy, all over the world. Mission has its pros and cons.

ESPERGESIA

I was born on a day
when God was sick.

Everyone knows that I live,
that I’m evil; and they don’t know
about the December of that January.
Since I was born on a day
when God was sick.

There’s a void
in my metaphysical air
that no one must feel:
the cloister of a silence
that spoke on the edge of a fire.

I was born on a day
when God was sick.

Brother, listen, listen…
Alright. And may I not go
without bringing Decembers,
without leaving Januaries.
Since I was born on a day
when God was sick.

Everyone knows that I live,
that I chew… and they don’t know
why there’s a squeal in my verse,
the dark uncertainty of a coffin,
from polished unrolled winds of the inquisitive
Desert Sphinx.

Everyone knows… And they don’t know
that the Light is consumptive,
and the Dark fat…
And they don’t know that the mystery encapsulates
that it’s the musical
and sad hunched back that denounces from a distance
the meridian step from the boundaries to the Boundaries.

I was born a day
when God was sick,
gravely sick.

(César Vallejo)

In this deep, thick, foreboding, sticky, penetrating, often desolated and discomforting night that envelops the entire Republic of Central Africa, there is lightning of blinding light lasting but an instant. It is the lightning of rifles, of shooting, of grenades followed by an awesome noise… and lightning of ESPERGESIA, lightning GENERATING HOPE.

In Bangui, in the neighborhood called Kilometro 5, in the parish of Our Lady of Fatima where I spent 45 days studying Sango, on May 1, feast of St. Joseph the Worker, during Mass, there was the lightning of weapons, shooting, of weapons, of grenades. It was a well-planned attack by people who want to see the night last forever. There were 16 victims.

We immediately perceived that the rumbling of the thunder of this explosion resounded around the world (someone even wrote to us from Brazil), we have felt the warmth of your nearness. We are OK. We were not direct witnesses. They tell us that slowly the situation is getting back to “normal.” In fact, that is how it is. After the lightning of weapons we have gone back to living in an even darker night.

In Mongoumbua there is lightning of ESPERGESIA, lightning GENERATING HOPE, infinitesimal, but of a blinding light: our visits to the Pygmies camps; Tuesday morning with the babies of the nutrition center; Sundays in the chapels for prayer with the community, sharing a bit of cassava and some small fish caught just for us; the Thursday meetings with a vocation group; the afternoons spent to draw and color; the endless hikes surrounded by cheering children; and the little newly born Pygmies, bundles looking at you with half open little eyes, who seem to tell you: “I was born on a day when God was sick, very sick,” butif I was born in this infernal night, there is still…

ESPERGESIA

Greetings, a hug and a kiss, prayers and THANKS

Simone CLM

Eucharistic Celebration for the Commitment of CLM in RDC

18 May, 2018 by Alberto de la Portilla

On the occasion of the 20^th anniversary of the CLM in the Democratic Republic of Congo a number of lay people professed their commitment in the Comboni parish John Paul II of Kinshasa.

The Mass lasted from 9:00 to 11:30 AM. The presider was the provincial of the MCCJ in the DRC, Fr. Joseph Mumbere surrounded by the faithful the lay and Comboni Missionaries of the city. Twenty seven lay people formalized their lifetime commitment for to the mission ad gentes.

The Mass, celebrated by the provincial of the MCCJ, Fr. Joseph Mumbere in the Comboni parish of St. John Paul II, was also attended by the coordinator of the CLM, Fr. Ngore Hali Célestin, the pastor, Fr. Jean Paul Etumba, and the Frs. Jerome Anakiese, Henry Likingi, and Marcelo Fonseca Oliviera. We thank Fr. Boniface Gbama who was the photographer of the day. The Comboni Sisters also attended with their provincial, Sr. Cinzia Trotta.

The ceremony went well and concluded with a reception in the provincial of the MCCJ from 1:00 to 4:00 PM.

Later on, on May 10 in the parish of Blessed Anuarite in Kisangani, 10 more lay people formalized their lifetime commitment for the mission ad gentes.

Fr. Joseph Mumbere celebrated also this Mass. The concelebrants were the pastor, Fr. Jaques Urodi, the coordinator in Kisangani, Fr. Augustin Fene-Fene and Fr. Ngore Gali Célestin.

The national coordinator of the CLM in the DRC, Tiffany Kimbuni, was also present and received the new members of the Comboni family. The Kisangani coordinator had words of thanks for all the participants.

Thanks to the entire Comboni family, fathers, brothers, sisters and lay people who work day and night for the Comboni mission and charism.

Our commitment in a few words:

We, the CLM, proclaim our faith in the resurrection of Christ, our hope and our joy. By his example, Christ calls us to be light in the darkness, and hope in society. We profess our YES to the mission today before the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a Yes forever, beyond all difficulties, our Yes to the charism of St. Daniel Comboni and his gift to the poorest and most abandoned.

Limbuini Kilolo Tiffany

National Coordinator of the CLM in the DRC

Human Relations and Group Life – 4th FEC Formation

16 May, 2018 by Alberto de la Portilla

Human relations and group life was the formation theme of the FEC during the weekend of April 14-15, 2018, directed by the educator Paula Silva.

The topic was quite interesting since it made us reflect over several musical themes and planted in us questions over the literary meaning of the songs, projecting them on the reality of our missionary life.

For instance, the “Lista” by Oswaldo Montenegro generated 10 questions about ourselves that made us remember the past and reflect on the present.

Another example was the “Contenedores” of Xutos and Pontapés, with seven questions that made us reflect on our going to the missions, asking us about what we would take along, what we would leave, what we knew about the place where we were going and how we thought we would feel once we arrived there, starting a new life, starting from nothing, with the possibility of going even farther and establish the objectives of our remaining in the field of volunteering.

We hear the witness of Susana Querido who was in Angola for six months and belongs to the Ondjoyetu missionary group.

We ended with the Eucharist, followed by lunch and then returned home.

CLM Nelly Gomes

The Journey Diary – news from the mission in Peru

11 May, 2018 by Alberto de la Portilla

We share a piece from the Journey Diary of April from the Parish of Christ the King in Vergada. Today we have news from Peru by the CLM Neuza Francisco.

To love is to go out

Since getting here I have discovered love on a daily basis. A love that constantly demanded and demands us to move out, move out from ourselves, from what we already know, that demands a journey. We must love the world and all that in it reflects the love of God. Here I found another way to love, I found a love that is available, simple, born of honesty from what I have and by sharing we make it possible to give and to receive. In a very disinterested way. A love born of growing together, like brothers. Here is where I ardently feel that I must be. It is in these brothers that I daily here the voice of God. It is in the ups and downs of the big mountains surrounding me that I constantly meet smiles, tears, and meet arms awaiting me, eyes reflecting history, a lot of history.

Along these dirt paths where I walk every day, I meet witnesses that convert me and make me thank God, the miracle of life. I am grateful for having been one of his chosen ones. A little at the time, I start knowing not only their faces, their expressions, but their names, their homes, their families. Many times I hear from afar when the call me “Andrea, sister Andrea.” Yes, here we are all brothers and sisters.

Someday I will tell you the story of my name. I feel I am one of them. We are family.

Ah, Peru, who stole my heart!

Sharing what they have, yes, often they give you the little they have and the lot they are. Very often on my way back I carry in my lap half a dozen apples from the man who comes to the seniors meeting, together with a banana from the man who runs a food store, plus corn from one of the families I visited or two or three potatoes from a sick woman.

Each day we accept to grow together. Each visit we accept to carry each other’s cross. We are words of mutual guidance, we are smiles, we are silences of the confessional, we are tears. We are, as a consequence of being, fragile and many are the times when on our knees we reconcile ourselves with love.

In the humility of each person crossing my path I meet the face of God, a merciful God.

In the daily joys and sorrows I meet the meaning of life. And every time I read it, I see a family, a group of children waiting for me, I see arms, the arms of Christ.

Nueza Francisco, CLM in Mission, in Peru