Ministry of presence

We learned about presence being a ministry in our formation training. I remember Paul, our Program Director, saying more than once that we’d need to learn to be okay with just being and not always doing. For most Americans this is not an easy task. We focus on productivity, accomplishments, or to simply put it – getting things done.

Looking back to mid-November, it started getting difficult for us to be content “just being present.” Our daily life was becoming a bit more routine; we spend quite a bit of time at the 2 preschools we work with and attended various meetings at church. In our spare time, we typically play with the neighborhood children or the children who come to the church property on the weekends for tilitonse (Sunday School, but on Saturday’s—all morning!) Life was beginning to feel “smooth.” [Read more…]

Eyes of faith

For over 18 months now Rafael and I have been living in Perú as Comboni Lay Missionaries. Some people consider this a strange or brave thing to have chosen to do. To us, we are ordinary people doing small things, attempting to live out our faith and baptismal call in solidarity with a marginalized community in the slum of El Porvenir, on the outskirts of the city of Trujillo, Perú. In the short time I have been here, I have met many individuals who I look to as models of ordinary people living their faith in small but extraordinary ways, whose actions alone show me what it means to have complete trust and reliance upon God. [Read more…]

A bunch of bananas

A bunch of bananas, some flour, sugar, a couple of eggs, oil, a little bit of baking soda and baking powder, a dash of cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg. With these simple ingredients and an oven, I made a loaf of banana bread, here known as “pastel de plátano,” and with it began the start of something beautiful that I never intended nor predicted. I simply made it because I thought it would be something fun to do and be a nice treat to share with the neighbors.

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How are you?

One morning this week, after daily Mass, I was hurrying to get back to the house in time to finish getting ready for work. Instead of giving individual greetings to each member of the community as I normally do, I said a general good morning to everyone. Later in the morning, Br. Luigi teasingly told me that he was mad at me because I hadn’t said good morning to him. I realized that because I hadn’t greeted him separately, I had not in fact actually greeted him. Whereas in America a communal greeting is perfectly acceptable, here it is not sufficient and in some situations may even be considered rude.
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Living in Peru

Lately I’ve been doing more visiting of people in their homes – for prayer meetings and some bible studies. The people are so poor and their homes are so humble. The majority of people live in houses built from sun-dried mud bricks with dirt floors and very make-shift roofs. Most have water delivered every other day (for about 2 hours) into their homes, but they don’t have much in the way of plumbing. Many, if not most, go to the bathroom outside behind curtains. They cook outside using either firewood or charcoal briquets.

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