Comboni Lay Missionaries

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Missionary Experiences

News from Central África

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Maria Augusta Hello everybody,

I hope you are well as your entire family.

I am in Bangui, I have arrived last night. All the apostolic community and I are well, thank God.

I pass today through the Holy Door of the Cathedral of Bangui. I was there on the opening day, but I could not get through, we went through one of the side doors. I really enjoyed going through it today.

In Central Africa was opened first the door of the Cathedral of Bangui, by the Pope, before the others! On December 20 the Holy Door of the Cathedral of Mbaiki, our diocese opened. Christmas Day opened the Holy Door of each parish. From January 17 until yesterday, the Holy doors opened in all the chapels that had door and the Blessed Sacrament was exposed in all of them for worship, in the custody that the Holy Father offered to our diocese and also offered to all other Central African´s. People were on pilgrimage on foot to the nearby chapels. We, on Sunday, went to delivered it to the parish of Safa. They came to procure us 6 km from the town and then went in procession to the church and remained in worship. The monstrance with the Blessed will visit all the parishes of the diocese until the end of “The Holy Year of Mercy”.

Since 13 December, I do not come to Bangui, there is always plenty to do in the Mission…

Since early January, a teacher and I are giving some afternoon classes to students to see if they begin to read. There are many students in CE2 (4th grade and who do not read anything). Thank God, it seems that they begin to read a little, the first few letters. With the help of God, who gives us the strength and patience to work, and the desire of the students to learn, we will get to learn. This month I was with a class during three days, but it is very difficult because students do not understand French and I do not know Sango to translate what I say. In May I will become the school principal. Pray God to help me in this new occupation.

From December 2 it has not rain, only on February 17 occurred a downpour as usual here. There were 75 days without rain … We had dry bushes, some avocado too, we will see if they still bear fruit. There were many fires in the forest and many cassava fields were burned. Many trees were burned. The atmosphere was filled with smoke, everywhere smelled like that. It was so much that made you mourn! We hope that will not cause more hunger than there are already. Thank God, it came two downpours, all nature has changed… just 34 hours, and tiny herbs came out where it seemed that everything looked dry. Truly, the water is the blood of the earth! Here the rain it calls “ngu ti Nzapa” = water of God, and it is true. Here in Bangui, it has not rained and everything is very dry… very hot!

Elia continues to care for malnourished children and not only. In January, she started going to Batalimo and found very serious cases, very sick children. When mothers do what they are asked (to give children everything it is distributed) they can recover well. When it comes to more serious cases, they are hospitalized sometime in the hospital.

Pygmies are still helped with medication when sick. Fortunately, because many would die since they have no money to buy them.

In the mission we have a home for the pygmies students, so they can better leverage school. Here they eat, sleep, go to school in the morning and during the evening come to study for one hour at the library. They are a dozen students.

Last week doctor Omnimos and his wife spent four days at the mission, as always very friendly. They operated 16 persons (adults and children). Thank God everything went well. This week they are also operating here in Bangui. If there were more people like them, the world would be better!

I wish you well-lived Lent.

United in Prayer

Kisses

Maria Augusta CLM

Africanize-me

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Africa, a cry that resounds from childhood.
A silent scream … I hope for so long.
Africa that makes me dream! That makes my heart beat a rhythmically. Africa that fascinates me!
Fantasy and reality they meet now, utopia and concreteness are given and inspire me to Africanize-me.
That my feet touch you without invade.
That my hands greet you without hurting you.
Let my heart love you more than he already loves you and that you, O Africa, show me your love!
A love that does not constrict. Love that does not destroy.
Join our knowledge without mine drowning yours, without yours inhibit mine.
Africa… Africa… Africa…
Welcome me! Accept me! Teach me!
That the childhood dream of touching you, now matured and possible can be made at a meeting of souls, in a true encounter of ME with YOU. Let everything be done with love.


Priscila Garcia. CLM

Something ends, something new begins…

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Ewa

“Our children have just finished their holiday season. This time it lasted unusually long – 3 months. The reason was the election of the new president of Uganda which took place on 18 February 2016. Fortunately everything went well and there were no big problems. In less than three weeks I will be back in Poland again. Well, something ends, something new begins. During the holiday season, I spent most of the time with the youngest children who have some problems at school. It was a kind of remedial classes. After the renovation work, the classes were held in the dining room that was turned into the class room. We spend a lot of time there, learning but also having fun. We painted, created things from plasticine, coloured and cut. In Poland it is something common but for my kids in Uganda it is always something special and new.”

Besides being the general administrator, here I am also someone between a baby sitter and a social worker. All this time I have been here, I have discovered that this is the best place for me. It is amazing and surprising at the same time, because it was not something I had intended to do. Mission teaches obedience and commitment in places where there is a need, not in places where one thinks he/she should be. Sometimes our imaginations are not real; our point of view differs from the real and true needs of the world. Because we think that our needs are: time for prayer and, above all, openness to the Holy Spirit. We also need all of these to discover what God really wants from us, in this particular place. I can’t say I know it already, but I search for it, all the time. I am starting to understand why I have been sent here. Now, as I am actually finishing my two years mission experience, I know I will return here, to my children, to St. Jude.

Ewa

St. Jude is not just children, but also people who work there. Baby sitters, people who look after the children – I spent lots of time with them. At the beginning of my mission, I was dedicated to managing all the employees, which was really hard, as I was the youngest person here and I was preparing to become their supervisor. I was supposed to check and assess. It was not a very comfortable situation, because I came here to help, not to control. However, as I mentioned before – mission teaches humility, but also verifies our vision about ourselves, our knowledge and behaviours. I have to admit that sometimes even the easiest things ended with some misunderstanding. The way of being, talking, gesturing were interpreted wrongly. Fortunately, we have learnt from one another eventually.

Mission is also a community, very extraordinary in my case. We were sent to a totally new place and created a new community in Gulu – before it had been only in Matany – where Danusia (another CLM) was. There were four of us, young and inexperienced girls: three Polish and one Spanish. Even the time we spent in prayer, talking, resting but also arguing and causing misunderstandings, was beautiful and intense. What always united us, though, was the mission, the people and, most of all, prayer. Each one of us is a different picture of God, but with the same faith and big open heart.

On behalf of my community and myself, I would like to thank all of you, for every little gesture, holiday cards, emails. On behalf of my children, I would like to thank for all the financial support: thanks to it our children now have new uniforms, better food, the possibility of better health control and … we coloured their world. But most of all, I would like to thank you for every prayer, every sigh about us: without you, we would not be here

Ewa

Ewa Maziarz, CLM

100 days

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100 dias100 days of the biggest environmental crime in the history of Brazil.

17 people dead, destroyed an entire community, toxic sludge that destroys Rio Doce, walking 600 km to the Atlantic Ocean and contaminate it.

100 days without any concrete plan for the recovery of Rio Doce.

100 days of absolute impunity.

100 days without anyone going to jail.

 

Day November 5, 2015 it seems to be a calm day in the community of Bento Rodrigues, a small town in the interior of Minas Gerais, with 600 inhabitants. That day, at 16:30 pm, the mobile phones of the people began to sound like screams coming from far away. Cries warned the dam failure containing the mud of Samarco mining. (Vale).

A river of mud at a terrific speed, which was directed towards the community, and in short time, hit another to enter Rio Doce and then into the ocean and contaminate it.

A toxic sludge with its 15 meters high of violence and destruction.

The violence destroyed forever the river, vegetation, wildlife, community, leaving red sludge making no longer possible to generate life.

100 days have passed and still remains immune, the news is set aside as if nothing had happened, something that does not matter anymore, to return to a superficial and false normality.

But normality is the one of injustice, normalcy is king in the profits of the multinational, Vale and company, not yet claimed responsibility for what occurred.

Faced with this serious situation, the state government did not treat this as an emergency, leaving the company the task of solving the problem with its own media, lawyer, operating engineers and scientists monitoring … at its benefit and interest.

In 2013, a commission denounced the irregularity of the dam due to increased erosion of the mountain that endangered the safety of it. A danger caused by the exploitation of the territory. At the time of the disaster, it was found that the company did not have an emergency plan and no security measures were taken.

In Minas Gerais, there are 754 dams containing waste sludge from mining companies and of these, 42 do not have security certification. Realising corruption, false balances, interest… We are talking about multinational companies that make billions.

In Minas, mining companies and politicians were always partners, like two old friends together in a system that creates benefits, earnings, but not for the common good, not for the people, not for our sacred land.

This environmental disaster involves all of us, because the damage is global, not just local, and always will be a large open wound in the history of this country.

Irrecoverable permanent damages, such as the death of people and an ecosystem that will never be the same.

Fraternity Campaign of the Catholic Church in Brazil this year, has the theme “Common home: Our responsibility”, «Scorra come acqua il diritto e la giustizia come un torrente perenne».

(Amos 5: 24). The Earth is our common home, so destroyed, abused and exploited house. We must work for an ecological culture that can defend, love and heal the world and where we are all responsible for this healing.

And to care for the earth, we must also challenge the capitalist system that explodes, kills and creates inequality by first placing the money and not the value of life.
minas

100 days spent, 100 days that have not been forgotten, and we must not forget, we can not build the future with this lame and sick, and should stop reporting.

The common house, our responsibility!

Mineral extraction by mining companies destroy the mountains of Minas Gerais, as well as in other countries.

During extraction work, highly dangerous chemicals that contaminate soil, water and create toxic sludge dams threaten the people and communities are used.

Emma Chiolini CLM(Fonte: artigo de Marcus V. Polignano, revista Manuelzão, UFMG)

Remembering the past…

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Emma Brasil LMC

Five months have passed since my arrival in Brazil, I arrived on December 1, 2013 in Nova Contagem, on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais.

The first months were not easy, as all beginnings, because of the new culture, language, customs, way of doing things very different from mine, in a place that I did not know. You have to go to mission open to re-learn and be patient with yourself and others, give yourself time to enter, find, meet, hear, interact, listen and understand. You have to know how to create a culture of encounter with the other and their difference, their time, their thoughts that allow us to identify the coordinates where you and me can start a shared way. We should not just relate superficially but, we have to “touch-meet” and be “touch and meet”, being willing to change. It is not easy when we are adults, when we have our own formation, our own way of thinking, it is sometimes painful, difficult, but it is important and enriching. Re-learn to know how to accept, re-learn to wait, to know how to re-learn to grow and, above all, know how to love. On mission, you have to be with your head, feet and heart, otherwise you live a partial and limited experience. In these five months, I have learned to do this and I still do, every day, with the difficulties and the problems that this entails.

I realized that I am finding God in a different way; I am living in a different way. The depth of gestures, events, situations, places, creates a dialogue with Him, more intense and deep. Share the Word of God in a small brick house, simple and poor, has a completely different feel and a perspective completely different.

Here in Nova Contagem I got involved in prison ministry, visiting the prison. Prison is an environment, hard, difficult, with many challenges. The first are those bureaucratic and time it takes to get to the identification and review. Most of the time I relate to prisoners standing behind an iron gate in a small space where you have to reach out for a handshake, negotiating with the bars. Are important moments of encounter, listening times, to greet, to promote human rights (prison ministry also aims to denounce the inhuman and unjust situations) and share the Word of God. It is an “intense” moment to pray the Our Father, hand in hand, with all the difficulties of the bars and then conclude with a round of applause to thank everybody.

In addition to the prison ministry, I am starting to learn the APAC (Association for the Protection and Assistance to the Convicted) system. It is an alternative to the prison system, where there is respect for the person and dignity. No police in these structures, no humiliating reviews, volunteers and the prisoners themselves run everything. An innovative system that does not punish, but educate and are educated together. Living the two experiences: APAC and prison allow me to see the differences, see how in APAC people is recover and in the penal system do not, because on one hand there is the respect for the individual and the importance of the person in prison, on the other hand the imprisoned is considered a waste of society, worthless.

They are two completely different worlds.

In the community of Ipê Amarelo, where I live, I help in the pastoral care of children. Up to now, I am dealing with families visiting and invite then to weigh each month as a form of control to combat and prevent situations of malnutrition, undernutrition and obesity. Going into some of the houses, which opens to me a reality made of so much poverty and deprivation.

Finally, another important moment in my missionary experience is the family group of addicts (drugs and alcohol). People involved are simple people, often women, mothers or wives who share stories of hardship and pain (who lost a son because he killed, who have a child who is using drugs, a husband with alcohol problems). The instrument of this group is simply to share and listen, tell us how to make a change. And direct individuals seeking recovery by offering help and support. There are a lot of strength and a lot of faith in these people, it is a group that “transform me” every time I participate. Every Tuesday I am pleased to participate and return home converted.

Meaningful to me is life in community, planning a common path with others, accepting differences, reflection and the experience of Comboni spirituality, love for God and Life. It is a journey of growth and discovery of others and myself.

Very important are the times of prayer together, where through the Word of God, we share our own experience and missionary group, a moment of personal and community relief.

Here, up to now, my missionary walk part from these meetings, these moments, these roads. I have still much to discover, but I am on the way and, with courage and faith to follow this path, reminding me that mission is not a matter of doing great things, but little things that are valuable.

02.10.2016 Today…

It seems like yesterday I arrived in Brazil, but it was two years ago and I am in the third.

I feel a little tenderness to read these words of the first moments. I remember, still, the first insecure and timid steps. Today, looking back, I see the way I did and am still doing, a beautiful path, sometimes difficult, sometimes falls, but always walk and climb. The mission will change you if you allow it for changing. It is not true that we have no expectations when we went out of our country, we had it and they fall when we start to shed our mentality and try to get into the mindset of the other, dropping our barriers.

Community life teaches much about this. Coexistence is an ongoing mediation and auto-meditation, discover and auto-discovering, sometimes fighting, sometimes through difficult times, but always trying to find each other. Each of us has its personality, its temperament and its wounds we carry and the fights are not so much with others but with your own wounds.

We need witnesses, be word embodied in action right where we live and this place is, in first place the Community.

“Community, place of forgiveness and celebration,” a place for sharing and communion.

Today my feet are strong and safe, but always in a walk of discovery and learning … barefoot.

Emma Chiolini, Comboni Lay Missionary