We are glad to let you know that a new team is taking over the coordination of the CLM in Portugal. The new members were chosen during the General Assembly of the CLM in Portugal celebrated last October to coordinate the activities of the CLM and this weekend of March 17 they took over, embracing their new mission.
In the pictures you will get to know this great team. From right to left: Márcia Costa, President; Élia Gomes, Vice President; Sandra Fagundes, Treasurer; Sr. Carmo Ribeiro; Fr. Francisco Medeiros.
We ask all of the Lord’s blessings, through the intercession of St. Daniel Comboni, on this new team. We pay that they may be enlightened by the Holy Spirit to take the best decisions for the future of the CLM and that we may always be able to support and to answer all the needs: not so much the needs of directing, but even more the need that the CLM and the mission of the Lord require.
We wish the best to all of you, especially for the new team of the CLM in Portugal.
In Guatemala we, the local CLM, started this year 2019 asking God to enlighten us on where we were going to serve this year. In Santa Caratina Pinula we are continuing with the program of child nutrition of Chispuditos. However, we are temporarily leaving behind the monthly day of mission experience there and we are ready for a new location… to bring joy… faith, hope… peace… consolation, in solidarity with the injustice and deficiencies suffered by other Guatemalan brothers.
Now the Lord is bringing us to the municipality of Chinautla, in the Guatemala department.
Its center is Santa Cruz. It is located in the northern part of the department of Guatemala, only about 12 km from the capital. They are famous for their hand-made pottery. The entire population is indigenous and they are ethnic Pocomam.
They have been suffering under a lot of political abuse and corruption, because the mayor’s office has been monopolized by the same mayor since 1985. He has always supported whatever government has been in power, until he was arrested for corruption in 2015. In spite of the arrest, this individual was able to have his own niece elected mayor for the 2016-2020 term and got out of prison a few months after his capture, the gravity of the accusations facing him notwithstanding.
The people are poor and abandoned… the municipality of Chinautla does not allow the garbage trucks to drive over there, because they want to discourage the people so they will leave and then they will be able to exploit the village construction material. So the locals throw the garbage here and there, especially in the river that crosses the village, because they do not know where to put it, or how to take it to the main dump. They live in extreme poverty, have no place to go… nor will they want to… it is their land… all of them are owners.
That is where Jesus has guided our steps… all for his honor and glory. Fr. Roberto Gómez Palma is the pastor of Chinautla, people are mostly Catholics and the evangelical sects have not done much of anything. We have been there a couple of times, on February 23 and March 16, and we already see that the people are friendly and trusting. They send their children to our activities. Both the older and the younger ones come on their own, very independent and sure of themselves.
We ask the Lord to give us all we need to proclaim the Kingdom and share the joy of the Gospel. Also that he give us light to identify the needs where we can cooperate as Comboni Lay Missionaries. We place ourselves in the hands of Providence and trust in the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, in the style of Comboni.
“Holy and Capable, making common cause with the poorest and most abandoned”
Last week I was able to spend a good amount of formation time with Carolina, David and Juan Eugenio in Granada. It was a time to get to know one another better, to pray together, converse, walk, cook, eat and to celebrate life and our missionary vocation, coinciding as it was with Comboni’s birthday.
During this week we also had time to delve more deeply in our history as CLM at the international level, to go over the agreements made in the African continental meetings and how could we avoid giving sufficient time to share on the conclusions of our recent general assembly in Rome. We always gave enough time to get to know the international situation of the CLM and especially of the continent where they will be going.
We also spent part of the afternoon looking at videos and pictures from Ethiopia and Mozambique, and from them we moved to discuss and find answers to the realities to be faced.
Then we gave quite some time to work on community life. Our community is always the base of our presence as CLM in mission and the fundamental point of reference in performing our missionary ministry, in feeding and living our faith. It is like the Cenacle of Apostles Comboni wanted in order to spread what we have within us. We spent time to unravel several practical aspects such, organization, community responsibilities, projects, the economy, and other deeper aspects like how to protect our spirituality, how to be a Comboni family, keeping contacts with those who support us and others. We did it calmly in order to really converse, exchange points of view and learn from each other. We ended this part studying the Charter of the international communities approved at the recent international assembly which is and will be the foundation of our presence in international communities.
We also had time to spend with the Comboni family of Granada: one evening with the men and another with the sisters. It was a good time to pray together and talk about mission. It was a good family time dreaming together of how Comboni dreamed of us.
We did not forget to give time to conflict resolution. We know that conflict is natural in our human situation and that conflicts arise in our communities as well. That is why we must be able to face them, resolve them and grow together as persons and as a community.
During these days, we picked an entire morning to go walking, to visit the beautiful surrounding of the Cahorros, with its vertical walls and the beautiful views of the Sierra Nevada. It was also an opportunity to tests our strength and to be aware that we have to be well prepared for the pilgrimage over the Camino de Santiago. We will have to take advantage of the remaining weeks to arrive to it in good shape. It is always nice to go out into nature and have time to converse in a relaxed fashion while walking and thank God for all his gifts.
We ended dealing with the theme of interculturality. It is wonderful to travel to another continent and share other cultures, but it is necessary to be properly prepared to know the people with whom we will live in the coming years, in order to respect their worldview, in order to share our faith making sure not to over stress our own worldview and try even unconsciously to impose it, but rather in a spirit of sharing and grow in our diversities.
We closed the week by spending the weekend with the CLM of the southern region of Spain. It gave us time to share, do some formation, revision of life, to analyze this time of preparation for those who will leave, recharge our energy for the daily grind, etc.
On Sunday we did mission promotion in a parish of Granada. David was able to give a short presentation of his leaving for the mission and we took the opportunity to chat with the parishioners and sell some trinkets to finance mission work.
Their time to leave for Africa is getting nearer. Let us pray that the Lord will be with them, guide them in this time of special formation, a time also of spirituality and prayer to prepare them for departure.
We send our sincere greetings to you all from Uganda. We had our Lenten recollection on last Saturday 2nd March 2019 facilitated by Fr. Anthony Kibira MCCJ the Vice Provincial Superior of Uganda. In attendance we had all the religious Communities of; MCCJ Community, Comboni Missionary Sisters, Sacred Heart Sisters International, Missionary Sisters of Mary Mother of the Church, Evangelizing Sisters of Mary, Female Focolare Community and the Host Comboni Lay Missionaries. It was a very colourful moment to sit down as an Apostolic Community of Mbuya Parish to prepare us for the Lenten Period 2019.
Fr. Anthony chose the theme of the recollection as “Growing in Love” not only during this Lenten period but throughout our lives and deeds. He said growing in love is not an easy journey but allowing God’s love to grow in us is the best way. This he said requires us to let ourselves to allow love to be sown and grow in us.
In his talk he came up with obstacles that do not allow the love of God to grow in us manifested in very many ways;
Lack of openness to God and one another in which he emphasized unless we learn to be open to God for our mistakes we have done to him and other people, it will be very hard for love to grow in us. This lack of openness can also be associated with un-repented sins that we have deliberately failed to confess.
Prejudices we practice knowingly or unknowingly in our communities with items we use daily; my chair, cup, i.e. personalize everything and I am the only one using it, my parents told me I will never make it in life which is directly seeing your own image in the view of what people say about you…this is purely Pride. He emphasized that for love of God to grow in us, we must be very humble to avoid pride by accepting ourselves as human beings bound to sin and make mistakes but not like God.
He also pointed fear of change to be another obstacle affecting the love of God to grow in us. Many people associate newness to uncertainty in life looking at it in human eyes since we have been in our comfort zones before. Change of this is interfering with our comfort zones and we resist it at all means. He advised us not to resist any change in our lives and said Love does not force to grow in any one.
He also identified another obstacle to love of as being taken up by fashions of the day which are new according to the current enthusiastic of the day and yet the world always favours superficiality which is not the root of our spirituality. We need to take time and analyze our life concerning material things which may be affecting our spiritual growth.
He also pointed out that we are always crowded with so many interests that make us to be too busy to allow the seed of Love to grow in us. He stressed that we need some space for us to grow better by letting some interests in our life to go away and let our heart to be open to allow love to grow in our heart/life. Allow the right image of God to be in your life other than viewing God as a commander who is dangerous to judge us. He also said this is brought about by sin that makes the good image of God distorted and that threatens us to go back to him with Love with repentant heart. He tasked us to always ask; who is God in my life? He said let us allow God to let to do what he deserves to be done in us. He pointed some fruits of love of God in a person;
Ability to give one’s life by sacrificing oneself, something to live for others
Willingness to bring one’s burden to the Lord at all times whenever the burdens come to one’s life to the foot of the cross
He said Jesus did not only die for our sins and so we need to participate in the process of our salvation which always comes at a cost but not free. Fr. Anthony said we need to carry our daily cross with love which will eventually let us be infected with the spirit of love for all unconditionally.
He also pointed some of our past obstacles as all that caused us a very great hurt in the past to love God and one another i.e. our past wounds. He said some apostles followed Jesus up to the time he was arrested but fled after he was tortured, thereby leaving our Lord Jesus lonely in the company of Mother Mary and some few of the apostles. Has our past wounds caused us to abandoned the will of God to be done in us thereby making Jesus to feel fresh pains up to now? He challenged us to descend to all our past wounds, address the wounds to dress the wounds with the Love of God. Fr. Anthony said these wounds are always hidden and are out great treasures to the love of God if addressed well.
How to overcome these obstacles to the love of God;
Journey with the Lord all the time and have someone to show your wounds in private in the spirit of fraternity life in our different communities and places of work. He said Jesus did not heal people in public but in private.
He said we need to create these 40 days of Lent to be like Jesus; praying, fasting and giving alms to all. This should make us come out of the 40 days of the Lent to be matured in our individual spirits and emotions.
He said we need to be aware of procrastination during this Lenten period of not postponing fasting but run the race with our Master Jesus in fighting our temptations.
He said we need to use these 40 days of lent to identify our weakness which are our areas of growth as pointed by St. Paul in 2 Cor. 12:1-10. He said let our weakness not be obstacles to the love of God but to let God enter into our hearts. This can be possible if we can boldly speak of our weakness to our Spiritual Directors, our very close friends and other people no matter what it may be. This is the first process of healing our past wounds. We need to surrender all these weaknesses to Jesus under the foot of the cross by allowing God to work in our weaknesses.
In his ending remarks he talked about the homily of a Bishop during the ordination of some priests which is currently circulated in social media with 3 very important questions which is applicable to us as Comboni Lay Missionaries and other religious communities and Lay Christians. The Bishop asked the following questions which for our case we need to answer deep in our hearts, insert yourself in the place of the Priest;
Are they weak enough to become Priests? It’s only a weak Priest who can make a weak person to come of his/her weakness. This requires spirit of humility
Are they broken enough to become Priests? It’s only a holistically broken Priest who can help a broken Christian to overcome his/her brokenness and allow the love of God to grow in his/her heart. This does not need Pride in one’s life.
Are they afraid enough to be Priests? It’s only a Priest who is afraid of sin that can let Christians live the life he preaches and preaches what he lives, actions speak louder than words
With these allow us to wish you all a fruitful Lenten Period as we evaluate our life in the past one year to allow God to correct our short comings so that his love grows in our life in all that we do. St. Daniel Comboni says the works of salvation are born under the foot of Calvary (Cross).
“Here I am sending you some tidbits on mission life.” With these words our dear friend María Augusta embraces us and writes on what is going on in the mission of the CAR.
Ana [CLM from Poland] had a problem with an elbow. X-rays were taken and then we went with her to the military medical center in Bangui. People there were very kind and helpful. God willing, we will have lunch with them tomorrow.
Gratefully, the rest of us is doing well. We had news from Fr. Samuel, who is also doing well, taking advantage of his vacation to rest and to visit family and friends.
This week a mother with twin girls came to us. She had already been here other times to ask for milk, because she did not have enough for both babies. They were already undernourished. We took care of them and they had returned home in good shape. Now she came with one of the babies being very skinny, and weighing only 2 Kg at 9 months… I was very stressed by it and immediately I went with the mother to the place where we treat those who are undernourished, to have her admitted. I do not know whether she is going to make it! May the Lord do what is best for her.
Little Andrés, the orphan I met in November 2015 and to whom we gave milk, has Pott disease (vertebral tuberculosis). He was taken to the pediatrician in Bangui and now he is being treated for it. Later he will undergo surgery like Gervelais*, who up to this point was not able to walk, but after two months of this TB treatment, has already started to take a few steps and it is clear he has a lot of inner strength to make him want to learn how to walk in a hurry.
At the school we have started two remedial classes** of 90 minutes each, twice a week. In the early years we concentrate on reading and writing. And then later we add Mathematics. May the Lord give our students strength and good will so as not to fail, but may improve their chances. By God’s grace we have some students with a lot of will power… this is what gives us the encouragement to continue. We are grateful to the Lord who gives us good health, happiness and the will to keep on with it.
I wish all of you a Lent filled with Quiet and Growth in the love of God and our brothers and sisters.
Always united in prayer and mission! Thanks for your prayers.
María Augusta Pires, CLM in CAR
* Gervelais is the name of a “little one” María Augusta referred to earlier on April 13 and June 11, 2018.
** Because the results of the students are not encouraging, as she explained in her last letter.
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