I am Maria Silvia, an Argentine missionary. For four months I have been living in our community in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It was a really nice change in my life! Even before that, the Lord had invited me to leave my native province of Buenos Aires to live ten years in Salta, in northern Argentina. But this, in Bolivia, is the first experience outside my country of origin. And even though they are neighboring nations and have the same language, it is still a big change! The experience of "immersion" in a country with another culture, in another community, with a different way of thinking... It is very enriching and at the same time full of challenges. I feel like I am in the "alfarería de Dios", the "potter's workshop" that has called me to have this experience to continue to "shape" my heart so that it is authentically missionary. So many surprises in this time and it is my first approach.
To let myself be surprised: not to start from my mental schemes, from my ideas, from what I know, but instead to embrace the new, to be open to what reality presents to me, to the way of thinking of the local people, to another way of seeing and carrying out the same activities... And, in this, discovering the richness of diversity starting from the simplest things such as food, music, signs, the way to guide meetings and even the way to greet each other.
To know and love. I arrived with the desire to love this land and its people more, to love more the mission we carry out here and my missionary sisters. For this reason it is necessary for me to know and, in order to know, I must observe, listen, ask, wait, trust. And so I am practicing these attitudes.
Gratitude and generosity. I feel that the Lord is inviting me to cultivate this attitude: to be grateful for all the good that those who have gone before me have sown, for all that they have accomplished, what is seen and what is not seen. And, in this "missionary chain" to insert myself with what I can bring of my experience and my consecration.
Always start from Jesus. It seems obvious but, as Father Luigi Faccenda said, "missionary spirit is that inextinguishable fire that is born from a deeply interior life". In the whirlwind of missionary life, in the newness of the place and of the people, the daily encounter with the Lord, through the sacraments, personal and community prayer and the renewal of my consecration to the Immaculate Conception, the missionary Virgin, is always a recharge of energy.
These are just some of the things I'm learning in this time. I thank the Lord so much for my missionary vocation!
Maria Silvia Ylarri
