The heart of a lay missionary

From 1996 to 1999, I served as a Comboni lay missionary, which is to say a Catholic lay missionary.  The Comboni Missionaries are a group of priests, brothers and nuns who minister mainly in places like Asia, Africa, and Latin America.  The US lay missionary organization is having a reunion this upcoming weekend in LaGrange Park, a suburb of Chicago.  When I start thinking of those three years in Ecuador, boy, does a lot pop up in my mind.  Blessed experiences.  Joyful experiences.  But also struggle and heartache as well.  We each were asked to write a paragraph for that lay missionary reunion, which I am unfortunately unable to attend, since I am unable to get away from my parish for a weekend during Lent.  Below is the paragraph I wrote.  Yes, certainly a lot of memories.  

Deep in the rain forest jungle in Ecuador, near the border with Columbia, I would travel every Friday afternoon from our mission site in the village of Borbón by motorized canoe for several hours to the village of San Francisco de Onzole. As I traveled under the hot sun of the equator, I would have to rest for a while just to rain my strength.  Nevertheless, on those journeys in the canoe, I would never tire of the awesome majesty of the immense rain forest around me, of the beauty of God’s creation.  Each weekend at that village, I would run a distance learning high school, where youth and adults from all over the rain forest would come to classes to earn a high school diploma, a rare opportunity for them.  I have so many memories of my mission experiences in Ecuador, of visiting remote villages, of the people, the sites, and the sounds.  Even though it will be 19 years this May since I returned from serving as a Comboni lay missionary, that experience is still a big part of who I am. That same missionary spirit accompanied me as I taught Spanish for four years at a critical needs public high school in the Mississippi Delta as a member of the Mississippi Teacher Corps and as I currently serve as a diocesan priest in Mississippi.  My interest in social justice issues and liberation theology that was nurtured in me as a lay missionary is still a big part of my identity.  As a priest, my background as a Comboni lay missionary has led me to different experiences beyond my parish assignments: ministering to inmates in the state and federal prison system, reaching out to residents at the state mental hospital, involvement in pro-life movement and advocating for prison reform and against the death penalty, ministry to the Hispanic Catholic population in Mississippi, and a five time pilgrim to the Camino of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. My time in Ecuador was a time of great blessing and great challenge, an experience that is so very vivid to me even today.