This is the ciranda song, you dance in a circle, each member hugging his or her neighbors and moving in rhythm by banging their feet loudly. This song is a dance related to Brazilian folk tradition.
Hi, we are Anna and Gabriel, and this is Ciranda, the podcast about our mission experience in Brazil. In which we try to take you into the everyday life choices of people living in this part of the world.
We start with a question that we have been asked on several occasions over the past year: what does it mean to leave with the Comboni Lay Missionaries? Who are they? And why specifically in Brazil?
We got to know the reality of the Comboni Lay Missionaries (CLM) after some word of mouth until we met this reality in the Venegono area. The LMCs were created following the charism of Saint Daniele Comboni. A priest, from the first half of the 1800s, who dedicated his life to the mission in ways that were new for the time and probably also for today, with the goal, as he said, of “saving Africa with Africa.”
Comboni Lay Missionaries carry on this spirit in the various missions around the world by accompanying the presence of Combonians on the ground.
To better understand this new way of doing and being mission, which is different from what we had known in the past, we did a 2-year journey of getting to know the CLM, at the end of which, together with our reference group, we were proposed to do a period of experience in an international reality. We had proposed ourselves for the mission areas of Latin America, and at the same time in the mission in Brazil the urgency had arisen to find a couple of volunteers who could carry on the presence of the Laity, already inserted for several years in the reality of Piquià . So, in May 2022, we left, leaving our little house in Cuneo in the direction of Brazil, in the state of Maranhão, municipality of Acailândia, specifically in the small neighborhood of Piquià . This 3-month experience allowed us to touch the Combonian way of life, to learn Portuguese, and to observe the reality of the various projects in which the Comboni family is involved. These are mainly 3 realities: the casa familiar rural (a school for children from rural areas), the reality of Piquià de Baixo (a community affected by pollution from steel industries), and the interior families living in the countryside, isolated and affected by the world of agribusiness (i.e., deforestation and monoculture of soy and eucalyptus).
The time spent in PiquiĂ was a short time but enough to make us realize that this would be our home for the next 3 years.
The uniqueness of this experience is also the choice to do common life with the Combonis, who live in the house next to ours. Therefore, not only are we included in the parish and engaged in the various pastoral activities but we share with them prayer times, dinners and other moments of daily life, making choices in common. This is the Comboni family, where lay people and Comboni fathers do mission together.
It’s been almost half a year since I came to Kitelakapel. It’s amazing how wonderful I feel here from the beginning. Full of peace and joy that what I wanted so much is now coming true. The three of us stay in Kitelakapel, together with Linda, who came here first, and Pius, who has been here for almost a year. These first months were a time of meeting people, getting to know each other in the community and observing everything that was happening around me. I know this adventure will never end. And I do not want it to end. I want to continue to explore, to learn, to taste this life in Africa which is a great gift for me.
In Kitelakapel we’re doing well, we are very busy with a lot of different activities. We still spend a lot of time learning Suahili. Linda is our teacher. We have a lot of pastoral work like: catechism, Young Missionary Group (St. Bakhita group), YCS (meetings with boys from secondary school), Sunday School and attending Jumuiyas (small christian communities). Every Saturday and Sunday we organize compound games for children.
I have started offering my services to the dispensary of the mission in Kacheliba, and the small dispensary of Kitelakapel. My big dream is to work here in Kenya as a physiotherapist. It is not only my profession but also a great passion. I have already taken some official steps to be able to practice my profession here. Pius and Linda continue teaching life skills in two schools and doing tutoring in the primary school. I had the pleasure of observing their work for almost three months when I arrived here.They do it really wonderfully, engaging children and teenagers in various activities. We’ve also started weekly workshops for teachers to improve the quality of teaching. Workshops are run online by an organisation from Poland Why Blue Sky. Now schools are on vacation so we also do other activities.
We took part in very interesting workshops in Nairobi organized by Fr Maciej Zieliński. It was about personality types. We are also planning to go to Uganda for one week to organize some workshops for teachers and nurses.
We’re now trying to set up a permanent tent to have activities with children and adults in case of bad weather, and we would like to have a little playground with swing, slide and merry-go-round for the youngest children. .
We send you our warmest greetings and please, keep us in your prayers 🙂
Last October 13, 14 and 15 in the Parish of Our Lady Mother of the Good Shepherd, belonging to the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus (MCCJ), in the city of Cali, Valle del Cauca, the Comboni Lay Missionaries of Colombia (CLM), lived a very special meeting with the community; in this meeting we had planned important events; The first was to meet personally the members of the community who are in the process of formation, in the stage of discernment (because all our formation meetings have been virtual), this meeting in person this year lent us to share the feelings, meet the personalities and discover the desires of each of the members who are part of this lay process. The second moment was so that through the experiences of three kinds of missionaries in the world, we could get a better idea of what it was to discern in the life of each one of these persons. And last, but the greatest moment, was the great step taken by three CLM, who have been formed for more than 3 years in the service of the mission, choosing the last and the abandoned as our first option; Father Franco Naschinbene, spiritual advisor appointed by the MCCJ to accompany the CLM of Colombia, consecrated Yaneth RocĂo Escobar, Felipe Eugenio Mora Parra and Patricia RodrĂguez Cerquera, consecrated us as Comboni Lay Missionaries, so that from our lay life we would commit ourselves to focus our efforts and to give reason of the eternal love, in which we believe, through the liberating service to our poorest and abandoned brothers and sisters.
Our meeting began on Saturday, after prayer, with the support of Marco Farias, a MCCJ religious brother about to take his permanent vows. He shared with us from his life story, his moment of discernment and showed us how through daily life, God makes the call and sows the seed necessary to follow Him; Brother Marco, at this time, is in his period of preparation for his final vows, that after living two years of mission in South Africa, this fact revealed to us that formation and preparation should always accompany our journey to and from the mission. At the end of Saturday morning, we complemented our reflection with a time of meditation; we were in a beautiful park in the middle of the city of Cali, there we “eclipsed” trying to guide our discernment, helped by a navigation instrument, which was a compass, which symbolized our constant effort to seek God through the mission among the last ones.
Saturday afternoon was completed with two wonderful testimonies, which in spite of being different, complemented each other perfectly; Tito and Regimar, a CLM married couple of Brazilian origin who are in Mozambique, in one of the international missions of the CLM, shared with us their daily life and their joy of serving among the people, they showed us how to survive the “hurricane” (literal and symbolic) that is the change of life in a mission, how, day by day God is showing us the way and that even though we have estimated and planned our destiny, it is He who is giving us the guidelines to follow it; This married couple shared with us their joy of the option they have taken and that after two years in mission, they plan to renew for another two years.
Finally, at the end of Saturday afternoon, we received the testimony of Xoan Carlos, a Spanish CLM who has been living for 24 years in Brazil accompanying the indigenous communities of the Amazon and the peasant people of the State of MaranhĂŁo in the northeast of Brazil; here he is doing a mission from another point of “combat”, that of justice and peace, defending the rights of marginalized peoples, especially in the mining area of Açailândia and rebuilding the rural sector from the people themselves, through peasant homes. This testimony made us see the importance of the integrality of the mission and that although he arrived in Brazil for a three-year mission, God, in his infinite wisdom, extended it a little more, extending it to his whole life.
Marco’s testimony focused on the ability to decide for a life option in the midst of so many possibilities offered by the world and the testimony of Vladimir and Regimar and Xoan Carlos focused on two of the different services that as CLM we have for the missions around the world. To close the day Father Franco, gave us a retrospective of the process of discernment of Jesus, that from the biblical context, where he clearly identified the humanity of Jesus, the son of God in the midst of the world and the option he took to do the will of the father in the service of the poor and forgotten.
On Sunday morning during the main Eucharist, we made the act of consecration as CLM in Colombia, a consecration that has generated in us a serious and responsible commitment that also “stoked the fire and the ardor” of the longing for a missionary outing. Through the act of consecration, we were officially recognized as part of the great Comboni family and became Comboni Lay Missionaries of Colombia consecrated to the service of the last and abandoned.
At the end of the Eucharist we went out in groups of two to make some visits to families of the community, in these tours we found wonderful stories of the community, that trying to summarize them here would be a challenge almost impossible to meet; in these visits the community transmitted us mainly the joy of the personal encounter, but also gave us to know their own and different realities and how, despite so many difficult situations, they live the experience of the community serving their neighbors, their family, the parish or simply whoever requires it.
On Sunday evening we lived a moment for recreation, thanks to the animation of a trio of Andean music, offered as a detail of the host laity of Cali and the community; this moment was for the encounter with ourselves, a moment of evaluation and sharing the feelings of the whole experience.
This type of meeting and the fact of sharing personally with all the Comboni Lay Missionaries, help us to continue on our way, to continue preparing ourselves for the moment that will lead us to live our mission experience, whether here in the country, in Africa or wherever God has prepared our missionary journey.
Photo. Consecration Eucharist.
Photos. Moment of consecration as CLM.
CLMs consecrated in 2023.
From left to right in order, Patricia RodrĂguez, Felipe Mora and Yaneth Escobar.
Photo. Retreat participants
From left to right in order, Father Franco Naschinbene, Jenny Trujillo, Father Alfred Mbaidjide, Brother Marco Farias, Yaneth Escobar, Luz Elena Silva, Hector Vela, Patricia Rodriguez and Felipe Mora.
By Patricia RodrĂguez Cerquera, CLM consecrated from Colombia.
That the memory of our deceased sisters and brothers, ancestors, friends and relatives may make us more aware of the attractiveness of the communion of saints as an anticipation of the joy that awaits us. Let us pray.
The journey to knowing one’s self started about 2 years ago when I first heard the word Enneagram. For one reason or the other it had been so elusive until the long weekend of 19th to 22nd of October 2023 paved a good opportunity for this magic of knowing oneself.
We unusually arrived early from different parts of the country to congregate at the St Joseph Retreat Centre under the Contemplative Evangelizers of the Heart of Christ a conducive place for reflection, seminars and retreat. This retreat brought together 13 CLM, 4 Comboni Secular Missionaries, 1 friend and MCCJ. The first day was a day of preparation and briefing, carefully done by the CLM assessor Fr. Maciej preparing us for the next day. We were made to understand that the workshop is two hours intense engagement with only 30 minutes interval break. Good supper came in handy with the comfort of night prayers gave us a good sleep.
Friday being a public holiday in Kenya, we started with morning mass at 6:30am, and then at 8:20am we gathered in the hall ready for the workshop. The facilitator started the program with a quote “A beautiful appearance will last a few decade, but a beautiful personality will last a life time”. She explained that Enneagram is a system of topology that classifies human personality into nine basic types. Brief history was shared how enneagram started.it became interesting when we started exploring enneagram types; at first I thought that I had two types only later to discover that one was dominant. As we delved deeper into these nine types it came clear that everyone had identified and aligned themselves with one of the types.
It was an eye opener for most of us, I understood whom am really are, why I behave the way I do it made me be aware of myself, from the testimonies real scenarios and examples shared by most of us. It made us aware from which possible Enneagram wingers we could borrow help from. It was clear for the motivations, blind spots and how we are also connected in this web of personality test.
This was a big score for us not only for personal development but also to relate well with others in a community, our surrounding during pastoral work and our spirituality without judging them but walking with them and accompanying them with utmost understanding. Now we feel more empowered and would respond rather than react as we prepare for the mission. It’s true to the quote “when awareness is brought to your emotions, power is brought to your life”.
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