The year 2020 has started with the visit to the province by the Superior General, Fr. Tesfaye Tadesse and one of the General Councilors, Fr. Pietro Ciuciulla. It has been a great moment of communion. They had also a meeting with the Comboni Lay Missionaries in their house at Solent Avenue-Kampala (in the picture).
From the 6th January to the 8th February 2020, the two visitors met confreres individually and all communities. It was also a moment of meeting Bishops of the dioceses where the Comboni Missionaries are serving and some other religious families with which we work closely. The two confreres visited different projects geared at human promotion with which we are engaged. In all the communities, the Superior General and Fr. Pietro Ciuciulla had a message of encouragement, acknowledging the tremendous work the Comboni Missionaries are doing in Uganda and inviting us to be focused on labouring for the Kingdom of God despite the challenge of a reduction in personnel.
They had a meeting with the Comboni Lay Missionaries in their house at Solent Avenue-Kampala. The visitors invited the province to be grateful to God for the forthcoming beatification of Fr. Giuseppe Ambrosoli, Mccj.
Scheduled for the 22 November 2020 at Kalongo (Archdiocese of Gulu), the beatification will be a moment of celebrating the work of God’s grace in a man who humbly and lovingly sought nothing other than caring for the sick. One of the moments that marked the end of the visit was the inauguration of a small project, Limone Medical Centre, situated at the former premises of Leadership Magazine. The facility designed to accommodate confreres who need special care as they follow their medical treatment in big medical facilities in and around Kampala. It will have an outpatient service open to the public. It was a moment of joy to have the Superior General officially opening this place on Friday 7th February 2020.
The province is grateful to the General Council for this moment which we will always treasure.
Saturday, February 22
The alarm clock rings at 5:15 am. Time to get up and get ready to leave by 6:30. On the way I pick up my other missionary associates. We are on the way to Santa Cruz Chinautla where, a year ago, we started this adventure. Every third Saturday of the month it is the same routine.
We could have reached Santa Cruz in 40 minutes, but because of the Saturday morning traffic in Guatemala City, it takes one hour and a half. When we get there, and the children are waiting, their smiles make us forget the time we spent traveling.
This is how it is all the time… The same… Then come the greetings. Then a prayer to start with, the recitation of the Rosary, a short celebration of the Word, since Fr. Roberto, the pastor of Santa Cruz, had apologized the day before for not being able to come to celebrate the Eucharist, due to other important commitments. By the time prayer is over it is 10 in the morning, time to eat something, some bread with beans and a drink of Jamaica for all… the menu the kids love the most.
Joy, peace, trust, service, always the same… the older children eat fast, take seconds on bread and drink, since there is enough for all, thanks be to God. The little ones cannot finish their share and put it away to eat it later… It is always the same.
We follow with a short catechism lesson… some knowledge… We tell the children about God the creator of the human being… we are all equal, intelligent, free and able to love. We have the same dignity as persons.
The theme is quite deep and it is passed on with stories, drawings, songs, games. We give out drawings to be colored and, finally, the children get to share what they have learned in their own words… The same… Almost always the same…
To send them off, they line up for a piece of candy and then we take them home to get a little closer to the adults in the community. At the end, everyone is happy. They are joyful, animated, thanks to having met others…and to be the other, about 35 of them, boys and girls between the ages of two and 12, more or less.
They are innocent, trusting, sincere, spontaneous and this way… in the same way… the older ones mind their younger siblings as it is customary, because the parents are usually working at this time on Saturday morning.
They have fun, they learn, they share among themselves and with us. Always the same…
But it is different…
They are different and renewed because the Holy Spirit makes all things new, a new day, a new encounter, different gratitude to God’s gift. It is a different date, a different joy, a different air, a different caress from the sun and the wind. God renews everything…
Everything is unique, everything is amazing, it was the same… but different… the same to human eyes… different in the eyes of God…
It is a different effort. It is a different tiredness and a different joy and peace, not like those of last year, nor of one… two… or six months ago… the one of Saturday, February 22, 2020 is unique and special.
Passion for mission, written in the heart of each one, comes from heaven, makes it all the same and all different. All that we live in, tomorrow will be different, renewed by the Spirit of God, even though it may all look the same… And so, this blessed vocation of being a Comboni Lay Missionary will develop.
It will always be the same… But different because of the love of God.
“Holy and able, making common cause with the poorest and most abandoned”
(St. Daniel Comboni)
Lily Portillo
Comboni Lay Missionary, Province of Central America, Guatemala
I hope this e-mail will find you well. I hope the entire family is in good health.
Gratefully to God, I am well.
I am beginning to feel the intense heat we have, almost always around 40 degrees over here. A heat that does not even begin to compare with the warmth I feel when I visit the families, play with the children or work with these wonderful people. Like St. Peter said, “how good it is to be here!” (Mt 17:4)
Here I am still involved with the library. By God’s grace and the generosity of some people, it was possible to buy some books for the library. This way, the students who come over have access to some basic textbooks. Two Portuguese ladies who visited here brought us calculators and other material. Often, I try to have school books and ball point pens to give to anyone who cannot afford them, but is interested in them. Always, if they are looking for a specific book, we try to buy it. Their time availability is not like mine. So, I find days with two or three people and others with 20. But, I understand. They are young and working in the fields, but also study, they have family and some with two or three children. Well, how can they find the time for the library. They truth is that they do and, when they come to study, there is silence. It makes me happy.
I keep up with a faithful group in English and computer classes. They like it. They want to learn and, even though I am not an expert, I am happy to teach them.
I also have a Bible study group in English, with four catechists. We read the Bible, then I explain the texts in English, meditate on them and sometime we watch religious videos in English. I am very happy with them.
I keep playing in the school which still hosts a refugee family. We bought a ball and this is enough to get the young together and enjoy some good times.
At least twice a week we go to the villages with the catechists, visiting families, playing with the children. These moments fill our hearts. To be with people is essential to our missionary vocation.
With the Comboni Missionaries we live with, we share Mass at 6:30 in the morning and an hour of Eucharistic adoration on Saturday. On Thursdays we go to the Comboni Sisters community and also with them we have Eucharistic adoration before supper. On Wednesdays, David and I have a community prayer.
Despite the work we have, it is the desire of the CLM, myself and David, my partner in the community, to start a new type of presence among the Gumuz. We are not the first CLM in Ethiopia, but we are the first to live among the Gumuz.
For this reason, we are visiting the communities, speaking with the people, analyzing the concrete situation of each village and family.
Unfortunately, the car we have does not allow for constant work. The roads are horrible and require a car in reasonable shape.
After a month, we stopped running games for the children in the villages because our car was at the mechanic, and this happens often. On top of that, we keep on paying for these repairs. We will need to buy a new car that will allow us to continue our work.
We also intend to build a house in one of the villages, near the people, and live there. Together with the house we will start working on projects. We are continuing with the project of setting up a children home for those who remain alone during the day, without adult supervision, plus a student residence to allow children to attend school who cannot go or need to cover over 30 km to get there. These are the projects we consider the most viable, if we take into account what we have analyzed and heard from the young ones and the adults.
Unfortunately, we need money to do all this. For this I ask for your prayers that we may do the will of God with these people. If you know of any NGO that finances this type of project, please tell us. Everything help, even a little bit, and is valued by God. And since I know that I am not here alone, I am sure you are with me!
At time we face adversities, like typhus or typhoid fever, but I am happy to have been sent to this place where God already is with the people.
I have been in this beautiful place for almost a year! I have no doubt, It is a beautiful place! I am happy! I live a happy life! It does not mean that there is no suffering. It means that, despite all the obstacles, it is worth being here. It means that God gives us strength and gives us the means to do his will!
I keep you in my prayers, I feel your friendship around me, and I keep on learning that distance does not cut the ties, but makes them stronger, reminding me of the importance of your friendship and your love for me.
Hugs and kisses from this friend who loves you a lot,
Perhaps this type of living in constant arrivals and departures may be the best way God has to show us the love he has for us and the secret formula of living at the service of others.
Thus, mission will always be a meeting of lives almost magically crossing one another, as if everything were already planted in our history. Mission will always be the concrete way of being living witnesses of a love that does not die. It is reborn and gives new birth.
Today we speak well about you. Afterwards, there remains the certainty that we were and always will be whole when we give of ourselves without self-interest, timelessly at all hours, when we step down from everything we have been building since forever and go back to being like children among them. We are family where smiles never end and tears sprout at times. We are a home where there is always room for one more. We will always be. Mission has not ended. It will never end. Because love always conquers. Mission is waiting for you and always will.
I have the opportunity to be visiting the Association for the Assistance of Convicts, APAC, in Santa Luzia, which is basically a prison detention center, but not just like any detention center. Does it hold privileged people? No. Does it hold investments of the rich and the powerful? No. It is a center made available by the proposal of Dr. Mario Ottoboni: no one is unredeemable. This is pure Gospel.
From the very first impression one perceives that things are different: one of the inmates is the doorkeeper of a detention center with 120 “criminals,” and holds the keys both to the main door and the doors to the closed and semi-closed sectors. Once you enter, it seems that these “criminals” have, among other things, different faces: peace, joy, goodness, repentance, charity, deep and sincere desires of redemption.
Here, no one is a criminal, but all are REDEEMABLE, a very precise word, exacted and necessary as the initial step to ensure that whoever one day made a mistake will not go back to that same state. John 8:11 “She answered, No one, Lord.” Jesus then told her: “Neither will I. Go and sin no more.”
For sure, there is a method, the APAC method, to work seriously in the re-insertion of recovered people in society.
With God’s help, together with the CLM Alejo Ramirez, for the past 20 years we have been helping in an enlightening project of interpreting Spanish texts, so that some of the inmates may take the ENEM test and with it continue their plans to attend the university after APAC. For the time being, we continue throughout the year 2020 with plans of major human and social importance.
To live among men who may have committed any type of barbarous acts, but who want to change their lives, and some of them without formal education, but each day trying to study, work, paint, and learn some trades, is a courageous thing. Actually, more than courage, it is only by the power of the Holy Spirit and God’s mercy, never merited but always unconditional, in a climate of strict rules in conjunction with the family of the inmate and local society.
I thank God for the opportunity of being able to embrace and see in the eyes of these men, who are always so grateful, the joy when once again we come to visit them. If God believes in humanity, who are we not to believe in it?”
Alejandro, CLM
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