Peru – Page 11 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

My experience of mission in Arequipa – PERU

21 July, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

This first year has just flown thanks to the Father. All mission experience is rewarding because you share your life and surely is more what you get than what you give, or we better say “share”. Jesus invited me through St. Daniel Comboni to recognize the African Mission in the Comboni parish of “The Good Shepherd” in the city of Arequipa and more specifically in the community of St. Daniel Comboni in Villa Ecológica. You have to encourage yourself, especially with prayer asking that we can discover the way where He wants to lead us and be docile to follow. The CLM brothers of Spain Gonzalo, Isabel, Jose and Carmen left a living experience in the community of Villa, they cannot forget. They allowed my arrival to be warm and now I feel increasingly identified with the community.

I began my service teaching a course in electricity and plumbing to a group of high school students. We hope to repeat this year in the new environment that is being completed to build. With Brazilian sister Sharliman Alencar Lobo, who stayed with us for six month and started the project at the library to help children with their homework. A single mother or father alone constitutes many families. Many parents go to work because of low income, so many of these young families cannot afford the time to be with the children in the afternoons to help with their homework and to complement the education received in schools. In some cases, they ignore their responsibilities as parents to their children. Many children are not well fed and are in need during the evenings until the arrival of their parents. The learning experiences in the communities of HUARIN and RONDOS in the Sierra de Huanuco has served us well, and therefore we share a glass of milk and a piece of bread to complement the opening hours of the library, doing more bearable daily life of children. The truth is that we are missing hands and would be nice to have help from a CLM brother, to form a community, tired together with happiness and feel that we are in community returning something that gives us the Lord’s love.

I also assumed the catechesis of adults. I accompanied a group of 12 adults in Villa in preparation for confirmation and two couples were married. It is a great joy to see them eager to know their faith and I always ask the Holy Spirit to give me the necessary lights to share the issues and my life experience with my limitations, trusting in the presence of God who gives us the strength to continue this work.

Due to the circumstances I have happen to be alone. I live in the parish house and make community with the priests of the parish, this has allowed me to continue strengthening me spiritually and be part of the parish reality, but I’m a little distant from the reality of the community of Villa Ecológica. My mission is divided in two. On one hand my profession as plumber and electrician and a bit more knowledge allow me to serve the needs at home and in the parish. All this is performed mainly in the morning. On the other hand, the development of pastoral work in the afternoons or evenings as required. The community of Villa is young, is learning to walk with the help of its own people and is necessary to let them have their own experience of being church and simultaneously accompany to further deepen their faith and help them to discover the style of St. Daniel Comboni “Save Africa with Africa”. I try to encourage them and help them discover how the Lord is working in their lives.

This month ends the collaboration of Anna, the German Lay young volunteer who came for one year to assist in the “cradle St. Daniel Comboni” in Villa Ecológica. She has participated in choirs and brought some economic aid to the most needed families of the area brought from her German home parish. Anna has collaborated with Pamela in the catechesis sector called “Canteras”. In Arequipa there is a pending work, to encourage the formation of a CLM Group. Mary our mother, who cares for me and my family, care also to help you, brothers from the group of Lima to pronounce the Yes to the mission, so that this mission can continue and others start.

Pedro Enrique García H. CLM Peru

And Jesus challenged me to do something new…

8 June, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

There are incredible things that become a blessing if you know how to say yes … that happened to me as Comboni Lay Missionary in the amazing world of interacting with children. In my daily life, I teach at a university and one day the good Lord asked me if I wanted to be a catechist for first Communion, the answer was without thinking, it was only for love, I said yes. Yes ?? !!! Yes. However, I was not a specialist in children and had only led teenagers Confirmation. Evidently, God wanted to give me an unforgettable experience … a true mission (which at one point I thought to be “impossible”).

“La Cumbre” (The Summit) (Pamplona Alta, San Juan de Miraflores) is part of our area of Mission in Lima. We as CLM reach this urban-human periphery with enthusiasm, there is no need to know trekking or mountaineering, although you just have to keep smiling as you climb the hills of our sector of Mission. A small guitar, some banners of our Jesus and Mary and the precarious lounge, every Sunday I WAS EVANGELIZED by the purity, humility and hope of every child who prepared very excited to get the sacrament. We shared the Word of God and the beautiful good news that Jesus had his own house on that hill so far from the city full of malls, highways and modernity. Jesus also expected the tanker that supplied the water because in those hills there is no running water, but there is a lot of love.

After several months, when sand of the hills stopped of been mud and the sun started to shine timidly in December on this side of Lima, Jesus dwelt at the heart of my “catechists”. I shared the Kerygma between dances, songs and conversations and they, my little ones, evangelized me with the conviction to arrive happy to their First Communion day. This January, the Lord gave me the honor to work with children in another city in my country, and in them I returned to relive my first experience as CLM “catechist”. That grace blessed me and think it all started with a yes.

Elizabeth Huaita

CLM-Peru

Gathering in Trujillo 2015 (CLM-Peru national meeting)

2 March, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

On 20, 21 and 22 in the city of Trujillo (northern Peru) was conducted the national 2105 CLM meeting. This meeting is held once a year and is nationwide.

It is a time where all CLM in Peru, including foreigners, share experiences on our missionary work: ad-gentes, mission fields, pastoral and missionary animation.

Thanks to the host’s MCCJ Community in Trujillo, the CLM could happily share part of our lives with our CLM brothers of Trujillo and his advisor Fr. José Chinguel. We have no lack of opportunities for prayer, reflection, discussion and sharing on the daily work of the missionary lay life.

On this occasion, we work under the framework of “the conclusions of Guatemala” from which we could make our proposals integrating them within our priorities for this year and the next one. We went to the meeting CLM from Lay Lima 8 and 7 from Trujillo. Unfortunately, some brothers could not attend due to various circumstances. We also have the presence of Anna, a young German missionary who serves in Arequipa. At this meeting we reach specific conclusions for this year aimed to achieve our objectives and goals together as one community of Comboni Lay Missionaries of Peru.

Why this gathering?

It is my third national meeting as CLM and once again reaffirms my missionary vocation. It is a joy to know I am not alone but with me there are others who feel the same call to serve in the periphery. Each testimony has been for me a conviction that we are on track. And the best is that the Lord was present, inspiring and directing our work.

This experience, in which we have gathered to share our life, our joys and why not also our difficulties, is the experience with the Brother, hear and be pleasant host, but with Jesus who calls us to share as a community that has one heart.

This space where everyone comes as he (she) is, with dreams, encouragement, but also weak and with fears, have made us been able to see ourselves reflected in the other. It was an appropriate time to deepen and reflect our missionary being.

Rocio Gamarra CLM – Lima

From Santa Teresita de Alto Anapati

19 February, 201519 February, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

Katagueta from Santa Teresita de Alto Anapati after many days of rain, sun and sometimes cold, believe it or not. Three weeks we’re here in this missionary lands and we still have three more. Today, thankfully, we have light even a few hours because all the previous time we did not. I can write with keys and leave the notebook and pen. The days go slow, the serenity of the location invites you to live calmly and appreciate the presence of God in this place so far from the city surrounded by nature in the middle of somewhere in the central jungle of our country.

Our job is to sensitize the native community. Especially children and, through them, the parents about the presence of God in everyday life, strengthen faith in them and prepare some possible pastoral agents who can assist in the Eucharistic celebrations that regularly held once or twice a month by the remoteness of the city. The extension of the parish is large and covers many native communities and settlers approximately more than 200, so that priests available cannot keep up.

The natives welcome us with joy and greet us as if we were longtime friends. We come to them through the program of “useful holidays”. In the morning we attend approximately 70 children, in the afternoon quickie prepare our lunch, and then meet another group of children who need special attention. Contact with small enables us to understand life here in the community because everyone here speak in nomatshiguenga language and is a bit difficult to reach smaller by the dialect but the universal language of affection and good treatment allows us to understand.

We are the CLM Nelson and Fisher. Thank God, we live this experience amidst nature with refreshing rain that relieves the earth after the heat that brightens our days. Sometimes there is too much rain, because it is very strong and extends for days.

Nelson y Fisher (CLM-Peru)

Children and poor rejoice in my presence

18 December, 2014 by Alberto de la Portilla

Testimony of Leticia Ordoñez Bañales

Originally from Guadalajara, Mexico, this Comboni Lay Missionary (CLM) decided to accompany the Catholic community of Rondos, a small town located on the heights of the province of Lauricocha, in the department of Huanuco, since November 2011. She ends her commitment this year and now tells us about her experience.

My vocation began when I was 16; I attend a Mass of missionary sending. The parish organized the event to send a Comboni priest who was leaving for Africa. I felt the call of God and in 1988 and I joint the religious Missionaries sisters of Guadalupe. However, I didn´t feel my vocation realizes and in 1999 I retired to participate in the mission fields in Guatemala with the Episcopal Pontifical Mission Societies of Mexico (SSMO) until 2000.

In 2001 I joined the CLM while working in the parish notary of Saints Crispin and Crispiniano of Guadalajara. In 2004, I had to drop everything and travel to Mexico FD to participate in an experience of community formation with other Comboni Lay Missionaries.

I first came to Peru with Rocío Quintero, my Mexican partner, in 2005. We were both sent to Huarin, in the Sierra de Huanuco. Salome Flores, a Peruvian lay, joined us and accompanied us for a year. Rocío had to return to Mexico after the second year. The third year came the Peruvian laities Doris Pereira and Enrique Garcia. I returned to my country and between 2009-2011 participated, along with Mexican CLM Marcela Alanis and Olivia Ayala, of the new mission in Metlatonoc in the state of Guerrero.

Currently, Rondos is the town where I perform my mission since November 2011. When I arrived, I found again Rocío. Together we carry out the work with the “mamitas” and an education program for the children of the town. We give religion classes in primary schools and biblical catechesis for children and youth. We keep the library open during the summer months and organize “useful vacation” workshops for students. Besides, we have training at the School of Mothers and prepare candidates for the sacraments. Especially, we encourage couples to marry in church, but only there was a marriage in 2013. The patron saint fiestas are times of increased demand for sacraments. We always consider on our agenda visiting the sick and helping the poor and vulnerable elderly.

This second experience in Peru has been characterized by the loneliness that many times I have lived. After six months Rocío had to return to Mexico. After a while came Daniel, a Peruvian CLM, with a great desire to work and a great friend of children. But he only remained seven months. The time he was, we make a great teamwork. Last year they sent Sharliman, a Brazilian CLM, who could not get used to the altitude of 3650 m and had to ask to be transferred to Arequipa one month after reaching Rondos. However, the whole time I was alone, God and Mary have been my company.

I confess you that many times I say to God: “What do I do here alone?” And the answer comes from children who knock on the door to ask me something; mamitas who ask me “How are you?”; young people who say, “I have come to visit you”; the sick and abandoned that rejoice in my presence. The school kids exclaim with joy sister Lety! Behold my reason for being present among them! You may wonder why I did not stay? Because I need my blood family and they also need me. In addition Rondos has the right that YOU take my place.

Magazine “Missión Sin Fronteras”