‘’I want to stop doing this apostolate’’
 | Kenya He is a seminarian for the SMÉ. |
Dec. 23, 2010.
Dear friends,
Just before Xmas, it is my pleasure to write you about a meaningful experience of mine. In other words, my desire for life and my desire for God as experienced in my daily life.
Visit the sick for me is a great challenge. To tell you the truth, it always comes to my mind to stop doing it. The reason is because when we go to visit them, some of this people ask us different kinds of help: money, food, medicine, clothes and so on. As we do not have it, I feel bad somehow. Some of them are really in need and their history of life and their sicknesses are so sad to hear and to see. Seeing them suffering and furthermore their conditions of living, my heart becomes very small and bleeding. The majority of them are single mother HIV positive without support from their relatives. They have no much hope.
Today is Saturday; Erget, Erlin and I, went to visit some of them as we do every weekend. We met Monica. She is 40 years old. She has three children and she had lost her husband by HIV three years ago. I have never met her before. Mama Sabina who has been helping us in our apostolate since some years has introduced her to us. Monica told us that after her husband’s death, she could not pay any more the rent of three thousand Shillings for a small room somewhere in Kibera’ slum. After three months without paying the rent, the landlord put her and her children out of his house, keeping with him all her few belonging.
She begged to us for help, and I look to my friends; they were sad and compassionate with her history of life. Seeing her tears, I started to say to myself, ‘’I want to stop doing this apostolate’’, it is making me suffer, I have no money, no one to ask for help for this lady. My goodness, I want to give up this pastoral.
I told Monica our conditions and the reason we were there. She did not understand at all why a foreigner who, according to them, has money and better possibilities than her, would be saying that he has no money to help her to pay her rent and take out her belongings from the landlord. She is not a Christian and I do believe she did not understand that we were there only to support her in prayer and in companionship. We left her sister’s “house” where she is living now soon afterward. Looking at my colleagues, they were sad and compassionate about her history. It made me feel so weak and fragile. I told Erget that I was thinking to propose to our community to stop doing this kind of apostolate and he told me his feeling was almost the same.
We went to visit other lady whom I had not seen yet. Her name is Zeitun Adam, she is 55 years old, and she has some health complications; she could not walk, she is an Alzheimer and is seating in a wheelchair where she spends her time sharing with her sister who came from her village to help her somehow. Zeitun’ sister called Amisa Juma, is 95 years old. In spite of her age, she still strong enough to go for Water, shopping, medicine and so on in order to help her sister Zeitun to have as much as possible to live without pain and hunger. Their neighbour is very generous to them. She was eating a slice of bread with a cup of tea and she told me that her neighbours gave it to them. She is so happy to see us there. She warmly welcomes us and offers to us a simple chair to sit on and rest for a while. She was really happy to welcome us and in spite of being a Muslim, she welcomed us as brothers, considering our visit as a blessing given, by the Lord who has sent us to her house. In spite of her weakness, she looks so intelligent and communicative. She started to say that she was a blessed woman because, since the beginning of the day to the end, she receives a lot of visitors: ``neighbours, friends, and now you people from different part of the world`` she said. She was spreading happiness and gratitude to the Lord for being with her. She said: do you see this bread and this cup of tea? We said ``yes``. Then she told us: `` my neighbours gave it to us``. Looking to my friend Erget and Erlin, they were showing happiness as I was myself. She told us some story of her life, her studies, and shown us same photograph she likes very much. By the end of our conversation, she said: ``please come again and if you can take a photo of all of us it will be so good for me. I will show it to my neighbours and friends who come to visit me that I have a friend from different part of the world who came to see me``. I said: sure, Mrs Adam, we will take a picture of us and I’ll give it to you. ``She was really happy and her happiness made me to forget complete the other experience I had lived in the other house. From that on, I said to myself: `` I thank you Lord Jesus Christ for having been helping me to know you more and more trough different experiences of my life and on the other hand teaching me how important is my presence among the people as a sign of your love and presence among your people from different religions and tribes.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for your prayer to me during the year which is finishing, for your financial and spiritual contribution to my Formation. May the Child Jesus be more present in your life at this festive season. May his blessing be abundantly available to you at the time of Christmas.
I wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year full of blessing.
Sincerely,
José Domingos D. Barão
Sém, Quebec Foreign Mission Society
P.O.Box 21654,00505 Ngong
Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa
Tel.071-611-92-41
www.smelaval.org