Margaret Mott – California Central Coast Chapter

In 2004, My husband and I went on a FAB (Friends Across Borders) trip to Kenya. We knew in advance that this would be a special trip but went with no idea about how this would affect our lives.

When we arrived in Nairobi, it was early morning and the city was awakening. The ride from the airport was a wake-up to life in a developing country; the smell of burning garbage filled the air, and street children were wandering through the outskirts of the city to begin their day, alone and in search of their daily bread. People were everywhere, walking or waiting for the small crowded buses—matatus—to take them into town for their business of the day.

I knew nothing about this country and her people but was anxious to learn about everything we were going to experience as we were immersed in the work of Maryknoll in the bustling city of Nairobi. I truly was in awe as the day progressed. We settled into the Maryknoll House and began our friendships with our drivers—Paul, Rashid and Simon, and with the Maryknoll priests and lay missioners.

Paula Schaffner – California Central Coast Chapter

When the opportunity has presented itself, I have enjoyed being physically present to engage in short-term mission work. However, this time the call came as a request for “someone to help update our website” in Chicago Affiliate Renate Schneider’s Haitian Connection newsletter. My husband and I had twice volunteered at the university she spearheaded after the 2011 earthquake, and we knew of some of the various programs Renate shepherds through her NGO. Having learned how to post articles on our Maryknoll Affiliates’ website and not having an overloaded schedule, I thought I could help support her efforts in this way.

The updating became a matter of starting a new website from scratch with a WordPress format, partly because I don’t know how to “write code,” the way her original website had been developed. I had to learn new skills even to do this, but no one else had offered to help, and Renate was extremely patient. After only about six months, off and on, we were able to launch the new website. From now on, my volunteer job will be only to post occasional updates.

Although I sat on my couch to do this volunteer work, I felt it was a worthwhile offering. My frequent struggles reminded me of one bible scholar’s comment that God asks us to perform from our weakness, not our strength. Maybe that’s so we’ll realize God was helping us when we succeed.

Besides sharing this experience to encourage you to be open to new ways of doing mission, I want to invite you to visit Renate’s new website:

HaitianConnection.org

Learn about the many initiatives she has developed—building homes for women, microcredit, small business startups, mental health programs, and more. Maybe you will see a way that you can help!

  Kathy Ress, Pam Cibik, and Gerry Mullaney – Northeast Ohio Chapter                                                                                          

This is a story of three friends and a journey. The friends are Kathy, Pam and Gerry. The journey begins in 2003 and continues—it spans four continents and 9 countries. The backdrop is Maryknoll. Who were these friends when we embarked? Who are we now? What happened in between? Where are we now?           

Kathy, Pam, and Gerry knew each other for some years before the journey. We shared traditional Catholic, Christian roots. We shared professional identities as mental health clinicians. We were good people who cared for our families and provided service to our clients in American society.                         

    Gerry, Pam, and Kathy in Bolivia 

                                                                                      

Then we encountered Maryknoll. Kathy had a head start as the sister of Judy, a Maryknoll Lay Missioner, who served in Chile. Kathy and Judy hosted us on a visit to Chile over the new year in 2004. There, we learned some important history—including the darkness in our Church’s history of complicity in the abuses of colonialism and in our country’s foreign policy which provided comfort to Augusto Pinochet with his abuses of human rights in the 1970s and 1980s. We saw light as well in the challenging and healing posture of Maryknoll.                                                                  

Following this adventure in Chile, we became intrigued with Maryknoll. We began a series of Friends Across Borders visits—to Tanzania in 2007, to Cambodia in 2010, and to Bolivia in 2012. These were not the mission trips of “doing for others” that family and friends expected. We enjoyed a richer experience of walking with sisters and brothers of different cultures and sharing and learning.               

We colored and played with the street boys of Mwanza, Tanzania. We experienced the exuberant music and an African blessing extended through the outstretched hands of the entire Sunday Mass congregation. We witnessed Liz Mach’s loving and healing touch for her fistula girls at Bugando Hospital.                                                                                                                                                                        

In contrast to Tanzania, in Cambodia was the quiet serenity of Hindu and Buddhist history and culture. We learned of darkness again—the cruelties of Tuol Sleng prison and the killing fields during the Khmer Rouge terror. Again Maryknoll showed us light in the work of Father Charlie Dittmeier, who is bringing the previously unserved and rejected hearing-impaired population into connection with Cambodian society. Father Kevin Conroy is establishing psychological healing in a country in so much need of these services. 

Bolivia provided an opportunity for contact with the indigenous—the Aymara and Quechua—and their gifts of welcome with blankets full of food, woven goods, and dance. The personal encounters provided deeper meaning: the old man on the shore of Lake Titicaca expressing his happiness that we visited his village to be with him; the prisoner in Cochabamba showing his appreciation for our attendance at Easter Mass with the community of prisoners.                                                                                                                         

Beginning in 2014, our journey continued with travels to Latin America with the assistance of two other organizations—GATE (Global Awareness Through Experience), and the School Sisters of Notre Dame. These stops included Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, and the United States border with Mexico. Again, we were witnesses to darkness—the decades- long genocide in Guatemala with US government complicity, the cruelty of the Cuban embargo, and the ongoing suffering of Mexican migrants who seek a share of God’s gifts across their border with the United States despite US “keep out” efforts. Again, there was light—the Saints—Stanley Rother in Guatemala and Oscar Romero of El Salvador—the migrant outreach of the interfaith border ministry in Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Mexico, the universal education and health care in Cuba. Most of all, again, the brightest light was that provided by the people who welcomed us and appreciated our witness to them and their experience.                                                

So here we are now—what are we to make of all of this? Our world is bigger and more complicated than was our experience before the journey. It is filled with pain and darkness, both past and present. It is also filled with light. We—Kathy, Pam, and Gerry—agree that the most memorable and meaningful light has been our encounters and connections with our fellow human beings—indeed our sisters and brothers—across different cultures and life experiences who share our humanity—who live and love and suffer as we do—and who can appreciate and share with us as I hope we do with them. In this journey, the spiritual connection among the three of us has deepened as well. We continue this journey through the establishing of a Maryknoll Affiliate chapter in Northeast Ohio.                                                                                            

Finally, as we found God present in these cultures and people, in their struggles, in their gifts to us, and in the loving and healing works of saints, we can conclude that God is bigger and better than we imagined, bigger and better than the darkness and pain of life. We are challenged to live believing this. We are challenged to contest walls and to continue living lives of encountering and connecting with all of our sisters and brothers. 

*This article was first published in Maryknoll Lay Missioners’ Voices of Compassion as “A Memorable Journey,“ p. 22, Volume 18, Issue 1.

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