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Missioner stories from around the world

Participants in one of my Theater of the Oppressed groups in São Paulo, Brazil, are homeless people who come daily to a soup kitchen in the center of the city. I learned very early on to let go of my expectations and just be present with them. As we meet in the evenings once a week, some come under the effect of drugs. In spite of that, we have a lot of fun practicing the games and the exercises proposed by the Theater of the Oppressed to discuss discrimination against the most vulnerable.

One of the participants is a 32-year-old mother of 10 children, who are all being raised by relatives. She has spent the last 17 years on the street. Recently, she announced she was pregnant again. She told me I should come more often to work with the group. I explained that it would be difficult because I had to work with other groups around the city. She insisted, saying the group was very helpful in keeping her mind and body healthy. She also casually mentioned that when I arrived that day, she was on her way out to buy crack but decided to stay and participate in the group.
--Flavio Rocha, MKLM

During a visit to El Salvador, it seemed that everywhere I turned I met people who had suffered personal tragedy in the 30-plus-year civil war. One of the civic leaders of the village of Arcatao, a woman named Rosa, saw both of her parents killed by the government soldiers. Her dad died before her eyes as he was thrown onto a sharp wooden stake and impaled. Her mom was tortured by having her face peeled and then was killed. One of the inspirational lessons for me was the strength of their daughter. She has a steely resolve not to forget the evil she experienced. She does not want her people to forget either. She has put together a group of like-minded people calling themselves "The Memory Group." They maintain a small museum of artifacts and pictures from that period. This is so the young people will learn from these terrible memories, all in the hope of preventing it from happening again.
--Deacon Larry Hart

When I was serving as a Maryknoll lay missioner in El Salvador, one family in the States, after reading a Maryknoll magazine article about education in that Central American country, offered to sponsor a young Salvadoran woman to attend the national university. Three potential students from our area sat for the exam, but all failed. They took a preparatory course and sat for the test again. This time Zuleyma passed. She and her mother cried when they received the news. Zuleyma began her studies at the university to become a math teacher.  Her father, a gardener, has a first-grade education, and her mother, a cook, went to fourth grade. Zuleyma is the first of her seven siblings to ever go to high school, never mind university!
--Margo Cambier, MKLM

Maryknoll missioners have assisted Hansen's disease villagers in South Korea for about 50 years. They were refugees who fled an old government "leper island" because they were told "soon you are all going to be sterilized." When they came to Busan, South Korea, Maryknollers helped them resettle with food, clothing, housing, land and later pigs, chickens, cattle and tools for farming. I informed them one day last year that our Maryknoll Society was celebrating its 100th birthday. Since we have prayed, worked, laughed and even wept together for 50 years, I said we should celebrate the many graces we have received! God provided the bus fare for a two-day trip to the countryside. On the second day, after the anniversary Mass, at which I explained Maryknoll's worldwide mission and how they have participated, we lifted our hearts with a great "amen" and later toasted with a delicious kalbi-tang (pork-rib) lunch.

Even our little Hansen's disease village has shared in this special grace-filled time for the Maryknoll family.
--Henry Beninati, M.M.