Hello there! My name is Ma. Isabel Barbosa Buenrostro, I have 39, I’m CLM “Comboni Lay Missionary” and I am also “Surgeon and Obstetrician.” I was born in a small town in the State of Jalisco in the country of Mexico, my town is called Santa Cruz de las Flores, belongs to the municipality of San Martín Hidalgo and is 2 hours from the city of Guadalajara. I studied at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Guadalajara.
I met the Comboni Missionary Sisters in late 2004, in 2005 I joined their congregation, first they sent me to my first missionary experience to Ecuador, where I spent the months of February and March, accompanying the Comboni Family in communities of Afro-Ecuadorian and Indigenous, that’s where I began to understand the mission and I realized the great thirst for God that have our sister nations, as they are very abandoned and discriminated, suffer from great material poverty but are rich in values and traditions that they still retained. I studied one year of formation in the postulancy, but in 2006 I left the Congregation of the Comboni Missionary Sisters since religious discipline limited me to work as I wanted my profession, and it was that I discovered the Comboni Lay Missionaries and saw that there was the place I wanted to practice medicine to the poor and to fully realize my missionary vocation.
My work with the sick is one of my greatest passions, because that’s where I see the face of Christ and where I found great satisfaction and human growth to be an instrument of God helping to heal bodies and souls… I heard the call of God upon my 20 anniversary, I was in discernment few years in the Religious Congregation of Active Living “Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus”, but since I started working at my social service as a doctor in rural villages, I discovered that my vocation was purely missioner. And here I am, I go ahead cultivating and fighting for my vocation. Because it is the biggest and most wonderful gift that God has given me and that’s where I see my true and complete fulfillment as a human being, I think the mission to which I was sent to this world, is to go to the chosen people of God, especially the poorest and most abandoned. For as St. Daniel Comboni, I feel I must devote my life to serve my brothers as Lay Missionary Doctor.
Since I met the Comboni Family, everything has been very nice, God has given me the opportunity to do some short missions, especially as a volunteer; after my first missionary experience in Ecuador in 2005 and leaving the Postulancy in 2006, I’ve done mission fields: In 2006 in the Andean highlands of Peru, in Huancayoc, Waras Region with Quechua indigenous; in 2010 in the Forest of Ecuador in Pambilar, Esmeraldas Province, with indigenous Awás; in Guatemala in 2013 at the Parish of the Comboni Clinic in San Luis Peten, with indigenous Quec”Chis.
And, in recent times, I have concluded my Community Experience and Missionary Training as CLM, as it is part of our statutes for the CLM to be form eight months intensively and prepare for mission Ad Gentes for a minimum of 3 years. This training has be performed together with my colleague Carolina; the first 3 months in the State of Guerrero, Mexico, in Metlatónoc Mountains, where we have a mission place as CLM with the Comboni Missionaries, is the region of Mixtec indigenous communities. It really has been a strong and very special time; we shared the mission in the communities of Huexoapa, Atzompa and Cocuilotlazala. Here we perform religious and social pastoral, especially caring for the sick. For as Laity, we combine our professional, family, social, spiritual and religious life, that’s the beauty of the Lay Vocation. CLM in our profession we can support missions in different social projects. The other 5 months, from February to Julio we have been studying in Mexico City, where we stayed at the Seminary of the Comboni Missionaries, hence we get different workshops, as a part of our professional studies, we must receive religious, spiritual and human preparation for been good missionaries.
Well, what I’ve learned in this time is that: All mankind are the family of God, we have a common Father and all nations, peoples and cultures of the world are brothers and sisters. Depending on the context where we were born and raised, we all have knowledge and experience of God, because God has been planting the seeds of His Word in the history of all peoples. I learned that our Catholic Church is Universal and we must also be brothers of all religions and especially we must respect and preserve the cultures of our indigenous peoples, Afro-Americans and African. As missionaries we shall accompany them, walk with them, to live our faith and share life with them; and work with them to recover their dignity as children of God and responsibility for their own human development. That’s the Comboni charism that showed us our founder St. Daniel Comboni. Because the message of the Good News that Jesus came to bring us to the earth and we still screaming every day through His Word, the events of the world and the beauty of nature and of life itself, is to be happy on this earth and then the happiness will reach its fulfillment in eternal life. Prayer and spiritual life is our greatest food as missionaries. The Comboni Family have celebrated for thanksgiving to God, the conclusion of our training experience on July 6, 2014, in the Chapel of the Comboni Seminary in Mexico City, where the CLM Advisor of Mexico (P. Laureano Rojo), the Comboni Provincial of Mexico and the Fathers Formators of the Seminary, presided the SENDING MISSIONARY MASS as Comboni Lay Missionaries: Ma Isabel Buenrostro and Carolina Carreon. God with the power of his Holy Spirit, continue to give us his peace and light to all his children, so that everyone become missionaries, and announce and make life the teachings of Jesus Christ.
This third day began, with the words of St. Paul to the Corinthians: “Love will never end” (1 Cor 13,8). These words were the starting point for the topic of the day started by the Superior General of The MCCJ – Fr Enrique Sanchez, who presented his view on the Plan and the reality of the Comboni Missionaries today. From these reflections, some clues about the reality of the mission of the MCCJ in our days emerged, and we can summarize them in three points: mission – as in the Plano of Comboni, mission is at the centre (heart) of our vocation and missionary life; resize – the urgency that today we need for the Institute due to social, ecclesial change (morphology) in the reality. The number decreases and in a few years’ time, 90% of the MCCJ will be Africans; interculturality – the reality that calls us to a change in our way of thinking and actions.
