In an age marked by violence, fragmentation and conflict, our mission as Comboni Missionary Sisters is that of being builders of reconciliation. We desire to tread this path both among ourselves and in the company of all peoples, sharing with them our weakness and our need for conversion of the heart. Also, we desire to embrace love without boundaries and to search for the truth as a principle of our lives.
The search for truth urges us to journey with the people of other faiths. Our spirituality calls us to be open to the spiritual experiences of different religious traditions. Besides, we engage in new areas of evangelization, including the world of communications and international organizations working for justice, peace, and the integration of creation for sustainable development, which challenge us.
To achieve this goal, we collaborate with religious institutes and local churches, sharing our charism with the laity, enabling them to witness and network with us.
My name is Isabelle Kahambu Valinande and I am from the Democratic Republic of Congo. After having worked for almost ten years in Mexico, I am now living a different mission in San Antonio, Texas, United States, working with migrants. Never before could I have imagined that a country as big and powerful as the United States needs to be evangelized!
NEW CULTURE
In my life I have had to face many challenges, one of the greatest of which has been the insertion into a new culture. I have had to put aside my own and accept new customs and ways of doing things. I had to start from scratch, becoming “ignorant” to let myself be taught and learn to love the unknown. It has not been easy for me.
Currently in the United States, I face new challenges and situations that I sometimes do not understand. I work in a migrant reception center where people from different parts of the world arrive. The suffering they experience on their journey is a reality that breaks my heart. Only they and God know how they can survive such experiences. Listening to their stories makes your heart shrink!
As I learn about their realities, I experience great difficulty and helplessness, not being able to give them the help they need. However, the time shared with them, the listening, the welcome, and the smile I give them also encourage my hope. Faced with these attitudes, they, too, in confidence, open their hearts and share their experiences. I reciprocate by offering my prayers. Something beautiful that inspires hope in me is to contemplate their persistence, struggle and determination to achieve their dreams, to achieve a better life for their families.
I often wonder why so many people have to leave their land, their customs, and risk their lives to reach a new place where no one is waiting for them, nor do they have a home or a job. Many people have been forced to leave everything behind in their countries in exchange for security in another country, seeking a dignified life and the opportunity to start anew. And what do they find? Difficulties, misunderstandings, rejection… It is tough to feel treated that way!
I have met many people who challenge me, saying that there is no need to go on a mission to Europe or America or Asia because they have everything… and they even tell me that I am not on a mission, that I am on a trip to the United States. Unfortunately, we often remain in appearances without knowing the reality. True wealth is not limited to material things, but is found in the person of Christ, who loves us and gave his life to save us, and it is not only the countries or continents of the Third World that deserve or need to be evangelized.
MISUNDERSTANDINGS
I, too, experience these misunderstandings and inconsistencies. However, my strength to move forward has been prayer and accepting the need to learn from others. I have embraced this life to serve Christ through others. As an international congregation, we are willing to enter into the reality of the world where we are, that is, to know its culture, customs, and traditions, including the language of the place, which allows us to insert ourselves. All this makes me feel happy and fulfilled, and is an impulse to move forward.
I feel proud and happy to make my contribution to evangelization wherever I have gone on mission, to share my family, cultural, diocesan, and national richness with other races, peoples, and nations, but also to learn from them.
I have discovered in my life that the more one shares with others, the more one learns and acquires new knowledge, and is more open to the world. My happiness lies in sharing with others the gifts and talents that God has given me, that is, my life.
