Comboni Lay Missionaries

Getting ready to leave for Kenya

CLM Poland
CLM Poland

Hello Everyone 🙂

Greetings from Poland! Almost three weeks ago I started my community experience before going to Kenya. Now I’m in Warsaw and I live with Ewa, my friend from community. Time is running so fast! I have a lot of meetings and so a lot of oportunites to learn something more. I speak a lot with others missionaries. They share with me their experience. Tell me more about challenges on mission.

I have biblical catechesis twice a week and meetings with Alberto. I have english lessons because there is also a lot of work to do 😉

Apart from that I spent a few days in Poznań where my friends from community did for me a great repetition of first aid! They also told me a lot about their pastoral work on their mission and many many other topics we discussed.

CLM Poland

Y por supuesto, también hablamos sobre el tema principal durante este tiempo – la comunidad. Con Ewa pasamos tiempo juntas, rezamos juntas. Tenemos un día de comunidad a la semana y este tiempo es sólo para nosotras . También visitamos a los Padres Combonianos aquí en Varsovia 🙂

CLM Poland

Os mando saludos desde Varsovia 🙂 por favor, rezad por nosotras 🙂

With pray

Marzena

“Seeds” project assists cyclone Gombe victims in northern Mozambique

LMC Carapira

Since March when the powerful cyclone Gombe hit Carapira in northern Mozambique, destroying houses and farms. We, the CLM, have been working to alleviate the suffering of the population. Always in partnership with friends and people with good hearts.

With the help received from Brazil it was possible to carry out small projects. Among them the seeds project.

This Wednesday, November 23rd, we started the first phase of this project, which consists of delivering 5 kg of corn and 3 kg of beans to the most vulnerable families for planting.

The benefited families have the commitment to return the same amount received at harvest time, so that we can continue the project.

The Carapira Parish is composed of 94 communities divided into 5 regions with 22 zones. We chose to make the delivery in each zone to facilitate the access of the families.

The second phase will be on the 29th of this month. And the third will be at the beginning of December.

In this project there are more than 300 families contemplated.

On behalf of the families and the people of Carapira, I thank everyone who generously gave a little of what they have to help those who have even less.

God bless you all.

CLM Carapira

The beginning of a new formation year in Poland

LMC Polonia

On the last weekend of September, we formed ourselves to go on missions. This is quite a nice way to start the fall: with God and with the community. There were many of us, also Comboni’s friends came. Together, we shared the missionary vocation at its various stages: we, still naive and inexperienced, those who returned with our colorful stories, and brothers, fathers, sisters moderately enthusiastic, with a healthy hint of sarcastic skepticism.

The topic of the meeting was the calling. Let’s make an agreement: discerning one’s vocation is not new. Most of us pursue a calling to the state. It was good to listen to each other’s experience. God speaks a little differently to everyone, He is amazingly creative. Let us hope that this exchange of experiences and sitting with God in the chapel will help us discover the Father’s proposals for our lives.

A special event also took place during the meeting – Edyta and Staszek, a married couple with three children, officially joined the CLM movement.

CLM candidates

Dear friends of the mission in Mozambique

LMC Mozambique

It has now been six months of our mission in Carapira, in the north of Mozambique. We would like to share with you about what our life looks like and what we do.

Our parish church, a would-be cathedral

On March 1, we reach our place of work, the mission of Carapira. Long ago, it was planned that this village would become the seat of a diocese, so a church of impressive size was built. In addition to the would-be cathedral, there is also the Institute of Industrial Technology, founded by Combonians that attracts students from places located up to 150 km away with its reputation. Our responsibilities are divided between work in the institute (we are involved in the boarding school, secretariat, production, administration, agricultural part, library and computer room) and in the parish (we are members of the council for children and youth, vocations, education, Caritas and fraternal assistance and justice and peace). In addition, we prepare formation meetings for people from Mozambique who would like to become lay missionaries, we prepare adoration or sharing with the Word of God, we travel to distant communities (in our parish there are as many as 93 of Christian’s communities, sometimes traveling one way takes several hours, and the Mass, it is only celebrated once a year) and we have our household responsibilities. There is a lot to do and this is very good! The more responsibilities, the less time wasted, and the rest becomes a real respite.

As I mentioned, we experience a variety of problems. It was only a few weeks ago that the long-promised construction of a house for our community began. Until then, we live in the home of the Combonian missionaries. It also turned out that the repair of the car, used so far by our lay missionaries community, is completely unprofitable. This means that until we have the money to buy a new vehicle, the freedom of our work will be significantly limited.

During a visit to one of the communities

We also had health problems. In total, in our community, we have already caught malaria nine times. Three days after arriving in Carapira, I fell ill for the first time. I felt very weak, so I went to the local clinic to get a quick test that confirmed my illness. Apart from the alternating waves of chills and fever, I had no symptoms. I was sweating very intensely, and the mattress on which I slept looked like someone had spilled a bucket of water on it. After three days of taking medications, you recover, but your body is weakened, and you should spare yourself for the next few days. This disease was inevitable. The region we live has a lot of cases of malaria. The previous Polish lay missionary, Kasia, was sick here fifteen times in two years.

Ilha de Moçambique – the former capital and UNESCO World Heritage Site

From 10 to 11 March, the province of Nampula, where we live, was struck by the powerful cyclone Gombe, which killed at least 61 people and completely destroyed 45,079 houses. The relatively low death toll is the result of previous meteorological warnings. In simple houses, mostly built of clay and wood, no one slept that night, anxiously waiting for the cyclone to come. From 9 p.m. there was no electricity and one could feel a strong wind, which grew stronger at two in the morning. It was in complete darkness that trees and roofs broke, walls crumbled and people looked for shelter in terror. In Carapira, only a few of the most solid buildings have survived. Meteorologists noted that the wind force was 190 km/h and that heavy rain fell, corresponding to a 20 cm layer of water. Water penetrated through the cracks in the doors, windows and the ceiling also into our rooms.

The houses were completely ruined

Although we were observing the power of the element, we were not aware of the extent of the destruction for a long time and the morning proceeded peacefully. Suddenly Father Jaider, clearly shaken, came running, saying, “Many buildings are in ruins. There are lots of women with young children near the church. They are shaking with cold. They need dry clothes. We have to help them! We have to find shelter for them, they cannot enter the church. ” These last words surprised me a lot. I understand that the church is a sacred space, but the situation is critical, why can’t they take refuge there?

There was no time to ask questions. We ran to our rooms to look for warm clothes. Jackets, sweatshirts, pants, T-shirts. We came to the mission with heavy suitcases, an opportunity came very quickly to share with the most needy. With meshes full of clothes, we ran to the temple. Drenched people chattering their teeth, little ones shaking with cold. I looked inside. Water poured from holes in the ceiling, and stone parts of the ceiling fell. Now I understood why these people could not hide in the church building …

We separated the women and young children and ran with them to the nearby buildings of the former school. There was water in all the rooms, but at least one of them didn’t rain. We handed out clothes, mothers wrapped children in our jackets, sweatshirts, jackets … All the time we could hear the terrifying sound of bent sheet metal, which the element was still trying to break. This school has become a temporary shelter for the most disadvantaged. With considerable effort and at a cost, the roof in the remaining rooms was repaired. We brought mats that you could sleep on. We managed to organize two hot meals a day. We distributed roof repair foil, flour and beans to those most in need.

The cyclone washed away the bridges and cut off many towns

Many trees and an old, six-meter-long cactus fell down around the church. A group of teenage boys volunteered to help with tidying up the area. All the hot day they worked very hard with axes and machetes, carrying heavy branches and even cutting their hands. Their only payment was a cup of water with lemon juice and two cookies.

Five months have passed since the cyclone passed by the time you read this article. We are organizing a second wave of aid. We collected over 2,300 euros on the crowfounding portal. Together with people involved in the parish Council of Caritas and Brotherly Aid, we selected the most needy. It was not an easy task, as the local population is mostly very poor. We wanted to select people who are completely incapable of work and who cannot help themselves. We visited paralyzed, rheumatic, handicapped people, people with twisted limbs, undiagnosed diseases, amputees … They were very grateful for the few kilos of beans or cornmeal, for a blanket or mosquito-net, possibly some thin sheet metal to repair a broken roof. For those who can speak, we asked for a recording of thanks. They addressed people living somewhere in the unknown land of “Poland”, using hard-to-pronounce Polish names: “Piotr”, “Konrad”, “Mariusz”, “Pawel”, “Urszula”, “Wiesławie”, “Agnieszka”: ” thank you for your help ”.

Ladies Laurinda and Filomena with the help received

People here live off of what will grow in small fields. Some cassava, some beans, some corn. This is enough for a poor diet. Meat or fish is a luxury. They work very hard, in heat and with simple tools, engaging even several-year-old children to help support their family. Your only chance to earn money is to sell some of your crops when the field is well fertile. Then they wander with 50 kg bags on their heads for many hours to the nearest market. In our village, a five-year-old boy swallowed a coin and an operation was required. His parents had to sell their piglets in order to get money for a trip to the city and bribes for doctors. Simple flip-flops or a used shirt at the market cost less than 1 EUR. Despite this, not everyone can afford such “excess”. Those who cannot afford it wear torn and worn clothes, sometimes barefoot.

We also supplied a metal sheet for the construction of houses

Poverty, unimaginable for Europeans, and the lack of prospects do not break the Mozambicans. In the evenings they play music, humbly accept the hard life in all its fullness, react with undisguised joy when we greet them in the local macua language. It is worth remembering that another generation of our great-grandparents was in a similar situation. Various novels from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries described similar poverty, the constant risk of hunger, illiteracy, superstition, difficult access to health care, and dependence on small plots. Today let us be grateful that our houses and flats have not collapsed, that we are not faced with hunger, that we can read and write, that we can heal our loved ones for free. May this gratitude always result in solidarity towards our hard-pressed sisters and brothers.

Regimar, Valmir and Bartek with kind regards

Our new home!

LMC Peru

For the first six months of my mission in Arequipa (Peru), I lived in the house of the Combonian Fathers close to the parish church. With the arrival of Rossie – Comboni Lay Missionary from the United States, we were able to move to our new home in Villa Ecologica – the parish “district”, where we are to implement all our projects. During the pandemic, the owner of the house made a makeover, thanks to which each of us has her own room. Apart from that, we have a living room where we can have guests, a bathroom, a kitchen and … a garage. We don’t have a car, so we don’t use it, but it can be turned into an extra room at any time in case our community grows. When we go out to the street, we immediately notice the snow-capped peak of the Chachani volcano and the ubiquitous dust here 🙂

Due to the relatively short stay on the mission, we decided not to take a dog to defend the house, even though it is a very popular practice here. However, three neighborly mongrels decided that we looked quite nice and in exchange for additional food they offered their help as guards of the household. After a few weeks together, they even let themselves be petted and want to play with us. The only problem is their huge appetite, no matter how much food they have already received on a given day, they are always open to more. Our relocation coincided with the celebration of Independence Day in Peru.

On that day, practically every house had a red and white Peruvian flag. Father Conrado – the local parish priest asked us if we had put up a flag in our new apartment and explained that it was a civil duty and that people could get a fine for not having a flag. However, he laughed that when the mayor saw that a Pole and an American lived in the house, he would rather forbid us to hang the Peru flag 🙂

Ewelina, CLM Peru