Missionary Experiences – Page 30 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

Visit to our community in Ecuador

3 September, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

The Comboni Lay Missionaries in Ecuador received on August 31, 2021, the visit of the Provincial Continental Referent of the CLM, Fr. Ottorino Poletto MCCJ, who taking advantage of his coming to Guayaquil, wanted to have a small meeting with our community.

After updating us on personal news and telling us about his visit to Mexico, he made us the proposal to have as CLM in Ecuador a place of mission, where we can establish ourselves and work in unity offering missionary service to the communities in the areas of education, health and other specific pastoral areas, taking into account our personal, professional and missionary reality. This initiative of leaving our zone can be a motivation for the new members of the lay community.

It was also a good opportunity to clear up doubts and above all to encourage us in the formation projects to get new members for the CLM, which we have taken up again with the help of our local reference person, Fr. Joseph Ng’ang’a, MCCJ, since July of this year.

We hope that St. Daniel Comboni will accompany us on this journey and help us to make the best decisions in order to be able to fulfill and become the place of mission for our CLM community in Ecuador.

Abg. Susana Ortega Delgado, CLM

In the desert with Comboni: challenges and joys of the mission in the pandemic.

21 August, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

Today’s challenges remind me of those of Comboni. They are not the same. Of course, in Comboni’s time they were much more difficult. The desert crossing, the various diseases, the fevers, the broken arm that had to be broken again to put it back in place (I shudder just to think of it), etc.

But now we are also living in a time of desert. The expectation of the trip to Africa, the sending of documents, the pandemic, the wait for the vaccine, the request for renewal of documents and the wait again. All for a greater cause, which is Jesus.

But through it all, I can’t complain. I was welcomed with great affection and the work is producing results.

After a stop for life: because the virus does not mess around and we value the welfare and life of our people, the people of God. Little by little, and following all the WHO guidelines, we are resuming some pastoral work.

We have restarted the adult and children’s choir, but with only two members at a time. (photos of the rehearsals).

The catechesis is done online to preserve the health of the children. The participation is very good, even in spite of some difficulties such as the lack of Internet in some families. So that these children are not harmed, we have chosen to visit them without entering their homes and without them going out. It is a catechesis from the door of the house, in the street, without physical contact, without proximity.

Group of catechists from the community of Nossa Senhora Aparecida (Ipê Amarillo neighborhood).

We have resumed the liturgical formation with the team of the community, since there are few people, we do it in person without forgetting the care.

We participated in the triduum of the martyr Fr. Ezequiel Ramín, together with the parish and the parish group of Comboni spirituality.

We have made and participated in some videoconferences.

In the coming days we will celebrate the national week of the family in the parish, the catechesis meeting with the confirmation group, in addition to the existing works.

A few days ago I discovered a new hidden talent (laughs), I discovered myself as a wall painter. Together with the Camey family from Guatemala, we painted the façade of the Comboni House. Modesty aside, it looks beautiful!

In social work we are together registering and distributing baskets of basic commodities. This is a collaboration with the diocese. These baskets come from the fine that the mining company Vale paid for the Brumadinho disaster.

And so we continue the mission in the way the Lord presents it to us.

It is rewarding and I can say with certainty that I will miss Ipê Amarelo, its people and especially the children.

Maria Regimar, CLM at the Mission House of Santa Teresinha, in Ipê Amarelo, Contagem/MG. Brazil.

African Memory Project: Jaime Calvera

20 July, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

We continue this series with Fr. Jaime Calvera, a Comboni Missionary who arrived in South Africa for the first time in 1985, a country to which he dedicated his work until he was recalled to Spain. In this interview he tells us with special enthusiasm about his experiences in projects such as the Mamelodi choir, which came to fruition despite the harsh social context of the country, and also introduces us to the Ubuntu philosophy.

(Interview in Spanish)

African Memory Project: Jorge Naranjo

7 July, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

We continue this series with Fr. Jorge Naranjo, a Comboni priest, who has worked with the refugee population of the civil war between North and South Sudan, a conflict that lasted more than 40 years. Throughout this interview, recorded by Casa África for its “Memory Project”, he tells us about the experience of a missionary in countries with a mainly Islamic cultural presence.

Jorge Naranjo have received the Cross of the Royal Order of Isabel the Catholic.

(Interview in Spanish)

Last webinar on ministeriality

28 June, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

This past weekend we held the third and last webinar on the ministeriality of the Comboni Family.

During the first two we were receiving as participants many proposals and challenges. The commission presented us the great work of the information gather on all the projects that the Comboni Family is carrying out throughout the world in different countries and continents.

There is a great wealth of service being carried out.

In this last meeting we had plenty of time for conversation.

On Friday, in addition to update the progress we have made, we were able to share in small groups the concrete work that each one of us is doing and to deepen our understanding of it. It was a very nice moment to know firsthand the direct service of the participants of the group and the importance of it. It is true that it is only a sample of all that is done as a Comboni family, but we were able to discover the passion with which it is done and the interrelationship between a service and another.

On Saturday we continued in this line analyzing the impact that these services are having in the different communities and even tried to broaden the vision of our work, the need to network with the rest of the Comboni family as well as with other groups inside and outside the church and to be aware of how the macro structural aspects influence the concrete communities and make this networking more and more necessary.

We ended by sharing ideas on how to continue the collaboration as Comboni family as it has been done during these meetings.

We are thankful to the commission on ministeriality of the Comboni Family that has made these meetings possible and to the great work of systematizing all that has been shared during these years, which offers us a lot of material for analysis to improve our missionary service.

The idea of continuing to collaborate by sectors was very much repeated, so that those of us who share the same type of services can collaborate and exchange experiences.

On the other hand, we talked about the importance of being able to meet regularly as a family. From the meeting we get to know each other deeply and new ideas for collaboration can emerge. Perhaps having an annual meeting in each country would be an idea to consider. A place where we can get to know each other in greater depth, share the services we are performing and respond as a family to the challenges of the mission from the place where we are. From there will emerge initiatives that can also be carried out both at the continental and international level.

May the charism of Comboni inspire us in this collaboration for a better missionary service.

Alberto de la Portilla. CLM Central Committee