Formation – Page 82 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

New CLM international community in Krakow

31 January, 2014 by Alberto de la Portilla

This is what it means to be a missionary, be able to accept the changes with joy and hope wherever they take us and with the brothers and sister you find. And it’s much easier when I discover with enthusiasm, that also in Krakow I feel at home and like a family member. The community has welcomed me with love, and the meeting of my new companions for adventure has made only increase my desire to get to Africa. An international community, three Polish and one Spanish lady, speaking English and with the intention and desire to learn quickly the Acholi.

We are Monika, Ewa, Asia and Carmen, and despite the cold Polish winter there is a very warm feeling in our hearts and all willingness to walk this path together as a community. We don´t know if it is the desire that we all have but we have connected really good and the atmosphere we breathes is wonderful.

We continue with the training process trying to assimilate and internalize things as necessary as knowing who we are (Comboni Lay Missionaries), our history and what it means to integrate and enter in a different and unfamiliar culture, that we want to approach with the utmost respect.

I think we’re a team that is going to complement quite well, where there is much freshness and the joy of living the Gospel and the Mission, as Pope Francisco is reminding us and that we will try not to forget at any time in our experience in Gulu (Uganda).

It could not have been more positive beginning of this year with my family, the Comboni family, with the Polish laity and the Comboni Fathers in the community of Krakow. Together they manage to transmit the idea, that we all dream, of unity and enthusiasm for a common goal: to follow Jesus next to the last.

Carmen Aranda Arnao. CLM

Echoes of Christmas 2013 meeting

26 December, 2013 by Alberto de la Portilla

“All different, but all united in Comboni wearing the face and the Word of Jesus Christ here and beyond.”

We begin by thanking all those who have contributed directly or indirectly to make possible this Christmas gathering. We are grateful to Sandra for organizing the meeting, to Sister Carmen Ribeiro, Brother Paul and the secular missionary Joanna and Paula for sharing all that is essential for us, LMC candidates, to understand in particular this missionary vocation of the Comboni family. Thanks also to Father Avelino who shared his missionary experience and celebrated the Eucharist. Thanks, finally, to all others not mentioned but that they worked hard to make the meeting possible.

This meeting was full of smiles, hugs, moments of conviviality and animated dynamic. It was the sharing of a joy that with Jesus Christ reborn endlessly. This was a family reunion. We truly felt as a family. We are in the same boat and we rowed in the same direction. In this boat where they are not only all those with whom we live this weekend, but all the other members of the Comboni family no matter where they are and where are they from. We feel with renewed strength and with real and physical certainty of knowing united, not by blood, but by the same creator and make us share the same mission. All different in our vocation but all united in Comboni wearing the face and the Word of Jesus Christ here and there.

By Paula Sousa (Portugal)

We share the joy of the CLM group of Mexico.

19 December, 2013 by Alberto de la Portilla

On the 21st of October has started the communal experience of Ma Isabel Buenrostro and Carolina Carrear, with some unusual anomalies, they had to start with the mission experience, as the missionary community in Huexuapa, Guerrero, has been left with a single element for family situations while someone decides to go to team up with Alma Rosa Navarro, they will be in the mission until 31 January, to continue his training in Mexico city.

They support in catechetical pastoral, liturgical and pastoral indigenous as well as in their professional work, since one is a doctor and the other has technique degree in childcare.

We entrust to your prayers.

A hug. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Manuela CLM from Mexico

A special training community

22 November, 2013 by Alberto de la Portilla

Last weekend we were in Madrid visiting Palmira and Carmen.

Within our Comboni family is normal for each missionary to prepare thoroughly before departing for mission. We always try to give the best of ourselves and this training is a must.

In this case we have a very unique training experience. Palmira Pinheiro is a Portuguese Secular Comboni Missionary who came to Spain to prepare before heading to the Central African Republic, makes this preparation with Carmen Aranda, Spanish Comboni Lay Missionary, also preparing to leave for the same mission. Without any doubt is a unique experience. It is a community of international training and also between members of different branches of the Comboni Family. This provides a unique wealth of experience and is a challenge for the trainer team accompanying the experience composed of Spanish CLM (Mercedes, Luis and Isidro) and Antonio Guirao Comboni missionary.

There is another peculiarity, this time this lay community include three others (a couple and a bachelor) from another association of Spanish lay missionaries (OCASHA).

This collaboration is the result of the Comboni family interrelationship that we have in the different countries and internationally, as well as the coordination and collaboration work that is performed within the CALM (coordination for the Associations of Lay Missionaries in Spain).All this reminds me of the dream that Comboni already had in the mid-S. XIX claimed the Council Vatican I (following his plan for the Regeneration of Africa): “The responsibility of the mission should be Catholic, not just Spanish or French or German or Italian. All Catholics should help poor black people … with our plan we aim to pave the way for the entry of the Catholic faith among all tribes across the territory inhabited by Africans. And for this, I think, should unite all the l initiatives”.

In a language of his time Comboni encouraged us to leave our limitations and particularism. He encouraged us to put the needs of the most neglected continent and its people, as a top priority. And all together we set to serve “the poorest and most abandoned” (as he said).

This Comboni´s dream of collaboration without interest among all it´s realized in this training community so varied as international .The whole Church in the service of the needy.

The rest of the weekend, Carlos and I continued working some issues of the CLM Central Committee. Happy and excited to see how these companions with availability and illusion are prepared for missionary service in Central Africa.

Once complete the missiology course of three months (where prepared with the other Spanish missionaries going out from this year), they will complete their training and perfecting the language in France. There, they will be living with the Comboni Missionary Sisters (more collaboration within the family) but we keep that story for later and we certainly encourage them to tell about it.

Greetings to all. Alberto

Dream of God in Us

13 November, 2013 by Alberto de la Portilla

“The position of a missionary disciple is not the center but the periphery.”

Pope Francisco

I find myself in this immense periphery of Contagem since six months continuing the mission that Jesus has entrusted to us as CLM’s. When I came here I was scared thinking how I could help, because I realized that the community walked pastorally well, each area with its coordinator, everything flowed.

“But when we silenced the heart, God speaks!”

Of course there wasn´t monitoring for the possible vocation to be CLM, but as we know the winds are not to have many vocations, especially in this new context through which it passes our economy in Brazil. But when we silenced the heart God speaks! There is a saying of the Macua people of Mozambique that says: “Yakhala enokhala mmurimani, ekoma khoniwa” (When there is noise in the heart you do not hear the beat). Then, one beautiful day of prayer, I put myself in God’s hands and asked the Holy Spirit, with my permission, to place me at the service of the brothers in these outskirts of Minas Gerais.

Therefore it would be necessary to seek new skills. Then I studied Massage Therapy and got some notions of Biomagnetism with Father George and Regina who happily led me.

“In small gestures I found myself with the reality of the people…”

Today, attending people in the Comboni House and in the Study Center of the Sisters in Pampulha, I feel that I just need to surrender and the rest is up to Him. The Pastoral of the Child is also subject to this call, these days we are finishing a training course for new leaders, this time not so worried about the child underweight, but children with obesity from Zero to Six years old. Right now we are working with 8 groups, assisting 200 families and about 300 children are been accompanied by the Pastoral of the Child here in the area of the parish. In small gestures I found myself with the reality of people who seek happiness, health and safety, life in abundance!

The mission today is no longer just the desire to be a missionary, but also training for the rapid changes that are happening and we are not always willing to open our mind, sit down on the benches of the preparatory school to better serve the brothers.

Of course I could not stop talking about the Pope Francisco. I’ve been in Aparecida do Norte for a meeting of the Pastoral of the Child and I could see him pretty closely, at the feet of the patron saint of Brazil. And in the emotion of the words of our pastor I prayed for all who were lost in drugs, families and to have more vocations in the Church. Thus we continued to walk; together!

By Maria de Lourdes Vieira – CLM Brazil in Ipê Amarelo