Pope Francis has declared this October the Extraordinary Month of Mission. Every 3^rdSunday of October, the Church celebrates World Mission Sunday. The theme this year is “Baptized and Sent”. These words commemorate Jesus’ exhortation to his disciples when he sent them, in twos, to go and preach the Gospel. And they set out, placing their faith firmly in God. A missionary is one who is sent out, he or she leaves country, family, friends and many other things. And yet we all know that we are never left alone, for the Holy Spirit will always accompany the community we serve and us.

I met the Missionary Community of Saint Paul the Apostle (MCSPA) in March 2001; I was in the final year of secondary school and preparing for the final examinations. I was busy and worried about passing the exams and being able to join university or college, so that I would be able to pursue my dream in life and have a bright future like most others. Two priests from the MCSPA – one of them was Fr. Steven Ochieng – were invited by a classmate of mine called Lillian Odembo to our school to give a talk to all the Catholic students on vocation. They spoke about the missionary life and what it meant to be a missionary. They also explained about Turkana where the missionaries were living and working. All that they explained sounded interesting to me, but during the talk I kept asking myself, Why Turkana and not other parts of Kenya that also needed our help? I gave my contact, so that they would contact me whenever the priests or any other member of the Community would come to Mombasa.

I come from Mombasa, which is in the southern part of Kenya along the coast where the climate is tropical. Fr. Francisco Andreo (Paco) used to go to Mombasa often to buy seedlings of fruit-trees, such as coconut, date palm and cashewnut for planting in Turkana along the shore of Lake Turkana where the mission had opened some small plantations of fruit trees. In one of his trips to Mombasa in August 2001, I had the chance to meet him. I remember Lillian Odembo coming to my house in the evening to tell me that Fr. Paco was in Mombasa and if I wanted to go and meet him. I went the next day with Lillian Odembo and other girls who had given their contacts. After this first meeting, whenever he came to Mombasa, he called us prior to his arrival so that we would look for seedlings of coconut and cashewnut at a good price. In one of his trips to Mombasa, Paco invited us to go to visit them in Turkana and see the work that they were doing there.

At the end of November the same year after my final exams, I decided to go to visit Turkana together with other girls who were in touch with the MCSPA in order to see what the missionaries were doing in that semi-arid land. I was impressed with all that I saw and with the Turkana people as well. I also got the chance to finally see where Fr. Paco was planting all the tress he asked us to buy for him in Mombasa. We used to go out with him to the lake shore to work in the shamba(or gardens), look for places where to build rock dams and earth dams. We went for masses on Sundays in different places within the parish/mission territory. Whenever we went out, we used to prepare a big basket packed with food, especially bread and tea. Whenever he met a child or woman, Paco would stop and give a piece of bread. This impressed me a lot and I wondered how someone from far could come to help our people in Turkana. I felt challenged as to why I was not the one doing it and yet I am from the same country as these people. 

I went to Consolata Primary School in Likoni, a school run by the Consolata Missionary Fathers and all I knew about missionary work was what I saw in the work of these Consolata missionaries. I was also in the parish youth group and each month we would go visitNyumba ya Wazee (the home for of the aged) in Tudor, Mombasa. 

My days in Turkana went by so fast. After the Christmas celebrations, I travelled back to Mombasa. I had wanted in my mind to go return to Turkana whenever I would have holidays. I also had the idea of inviting other youth from my parish to organize and go to help as we used to do with the elderly in Mombasa. Upon arriving home from Turkana, I kept explaining to my family and friends what I had seen and done in Turkana. Back home I could not stop thinking and talking about the missionaries, the Turkana people and the work of the missionaries among them. In February 2002 I decided to forget all that I had desired to do after my studies, and made a firm decision to return to Turkana.

I first explained my decision to my elder sister but she could not understand why I would want that. Then I decided to explain to my mother, but she was completely against me being a lay missionary. I come from a Catholic family and I thought that my mother, being a good Catholic all her life, would not hesitate or have any objection to me following this vocation as a lay missionary and serving the Church. She refused to give me the fare to go back to Turkana; my elder sister helped me pay the transport and she told my mother to let her daughter do whatever she liked as she would come back in the end. That is when my mother cooled down, and I called Fr. Paco to say that I had decided to go back to Turkana to live there and be a lay missionary.

I first lived in Turkana, and then in Ethiopia, and afterwards I went to live in Mexico. This meant that I had to learn Spanish. It was not easy for me, but with the help of other missionaries like Lourdes, Rosa, Eleni, Pauline and others, everything became so much easier. I gained and learnt a lot all those years living in Mexico. We used to work in the outskirts of Mexico City in an area called Ajusco. The majority of families that live in this place are immigrants from other countries of South America. There are also other families from Mexico who come from rural areas with the hope finding an elevated lifestyle in the city but then the reality turned to be different and so they have no choice but to opt to live in this poor neighborhood. The reality in Mexico really impressed me. In Ajusco, we worked with children, young people and women and many companies as well as private people would always help by responding positively whenever we asked for support. People would donate for the smooth running of the nutritional centre. I also studied a three-year Diploma Course in Nursery School teacher, and it was very difficult for me to study in a foreign language but thanks to one teacher, Mrs. Maria Eugenia Roch, a music teacher, I was able to understand the course and finish it. After getting used to Mexico and its people, I had to leave and come back to Africa, Ethiopia in particular. This meant learning a new culture and new languages: Amharic and Oromo.

In my experience as a missionary, I have experienced several paradoxes in life: light and darkness, happiness and sadness, certainty and crisis, but most of all, a continuous transformation and learning. Missionary life makes one feel united with humanity and one discovers and learns to value everything, even when that which one does may appear insignificant in the eyes of the society.

I would like to thank everyone who helped me in my vocation, especially Fr. Francisco Andreo for inviting and giving me the chance to follow Christ through him. Also to all those with whom I have lived the many years in this missionary journey of a life: Lourdes, Rosa, Scholastica, Eleni, Pauline, Josephine, Luz Maria and the other women in the Community; to all my family, my elder sister and my mother for understanding my vocation. I thank Lillian Odembo too, who really encouraged me to continue in this journey, even though she eventually left to do something different in her life.

I would also like to invite all the young people to be open to the call of God, that they should not be carried away by the unnecessary storms of the world and shun the call of God. They should leave some space for God to enter into their life’s dreams. If they feel a call from God, they should not doubt it and, instead, realize that there are also greater opportunities in life as a follower of Christ!

Lydiah Obok , MCSPA

I am not entirely sure whether it was I who was seeking Jesus or it was He who found me… maybe both.

As far back as I can recall my own conscience, I remember a deep desire to never fall into the worldly race: university, a well paid job, start a family, all that lifestyle stood up like a huge mountain. Panikkar’s reflection works well here because he substitutes the more traditional fuga mundi (escaping from the world) by fleeing from the system. The system, the world, as it appeared to me, just was not my thing. And the Church would not have seemed it either, given the fact that I was the son of a militant communist.

Today, from the perspective acquired through the passage of time, I subscribe to Panikkar’s words: “Since my early youth I have always felt like a monk, but one without a monastery, or at least without walls…, without a habit, or at least without vestments other than those worn by the human family. Yet even these vestments had to be discarded, because all cultural clothes are only partial revelations of what they conceal: the pure nakedness of total transparency, only visible to the simple eye of the pure in heart”. But, where to go? Who to go with? I felt somewhat lost. 

In my case, I felt this need to change, when I was in high school. I was a bad student mainly due to a lack of drive, and, why hide it, also lack of wit. So when I failed three subjects at school my parents got alarmed and, I am not entirely sure how, against my wishes, I ended up in a parish with a group of students who met to review their pending subjects. It was there that I first met Paco and others, with whom we now form the Missionary Community of Saint Paul the Apostle. I remember that, in spite of my prejudices against the Catholic Church, mine was a love at first sight. This was what I had been seeking and I was staying put. Thus began a long adventure, taking me to Turkana, Kenya famously acclaimed in bold travellers’ books as one of the remotest places on the planet. There I stayed for nearly 20 years and now I am in Malawi the “warm heart of Africa”, where I assist to run a parish reaching to 49 communities trying to get involved in they personal and community development

What seduced me? I like the words of Cardinal van Thuan “I have left everything to follow Jesus, because I love Jesus’ defects”.  His first defect, he has a terrible memory and forgives the sinful woman who anoints his feet with perfume (Lk 7,47) and praises the father who welcomes the prodigal son after he had squandered all his inheritance (Lk 15, 18–24). His second defect, Jesus doesn’t know maths, he abandons the 99 sheep to look for the lost one (Lk 15, 4-7). Third defect, Jesus doesn’t know logic. The lady who lost a drachma spends much more in celebrating that she found it (Lk 5, 8–10). Fourth defect, Jesus is a risk-taker; he promises trials and persecutions (Mt 5, 3-12). Fifth defect, Jesus doesn’t understand finances: he pays the same to those who have worked the whole day in the vineyard as to those who came at the last hour (Mt 20, 1–6). But why does Jesus have these defects? Because he is love, “Real love does not reason, does not measure, does not create barriers, does not calculate, does not remember offenses, and does not impose conditions”.  

The Gospel is something that, if not shared, withers. If in some way Jesus and his defects seduced me, it was through the mediation of specific people. Along my way, I have met many others who at one level or another are also searching. I think that when we, the labourers, live in love, and strive to awaken longings which gush forth from the treasure of living the Gospel raw in the flesh, Jesus will then seek out many others who set themselves on the road. That is why I desire to love and keep going ahead till my days come to an end.

Fernando Aguirre, MCSPA

References 

1. Raimundo Panikkar. Elogio de la Sencillez. Estella: EVD, 1993. p. 148

2. Ibídem. p. 14

3. Francis Xavier Van Thuan Nguyen. Testigos de Esperanza. Madrid: Ed. Ciudad Nueva, 2001. p. 26

4. Ibídem. p. 25-31