One of my main duties as a Salesian Lay Missioner is to be an educator to the youth. I interact with the youth in a variety of places and teachings opportunities arise all the time. I could be teaching good sportsmanship on a basketball court, having a discussion with teenagers while they are doing there chores at the boarding school, or teaching in a formal classroom setting at a school in the country. This is what I came down to Bolivia to do, to be Don Bosco for the youth that is to point the children to God and help them discover their gifts to help each other.
I have been spending my time lately at many locations around
Yapacani. I move back and forth from the boarding school in the country to
helping at the parish and surrounding schools in the “city” of yapacani. I say “city”
because yapacani is not really a city on USA terms but here in Bolivia the
urban area of yapacani is considered a small city to the Bolivians. Father
Arturo really encourages me a lot to spend more time at the boarding school in
the country. I like being at the boarding school with the kids. I miss them
when I’m back at the parish, but that also means if I’m out there at the
boarding school all the time, I cannot be with the kids that are in the city. Ahh
the trouble of only being able to be in one place at one time.
So what do I do when I’m with the kids in the city? I visit their schools. I try to have a 2 minute
speech about God or a prayer ready to give to the kids outside on the playground.
The kids who are about 7 to 13 years old genuinely stay tuned in. Surprisingly
to me they love listening and talking about Jesus. They also like to tell me
what they know about Jesus too. They have the desire to learn more about our
Lord. Many of the small Christian classroom building schools here in Yapacani
do not have religion teachers so I like to make an effort to visit these schools.
When I’m at the boarding school I usually arrive in the afternoon when the kids have already returned from school and are doing their homework. So I usually jump right in helping the teenagers with their English homework. I also can help with math and science. If you ask me to help you with Bolivian History and languages, you are out of luck. Once a week I give a “good night” which in my style is a powerpoint and video clip. The good nights are usually a lesson to the kids about our Christian faith and God. A tradition that Don Bosco carried out with his kids. I would also say that I know more about the kids here than say the kids that I visit at the school or anywhere else. I help the kids at the boarding school with their hw, I eat meals with them, I play with them, I watch tv with them( we only get two channels), I chase chickens with them, I go to mass with them, etc.
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| 'harvesting' Yuca for dinner in the garden |
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| dinner time!!!! |
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| Celebrated the Anniversary of the boarding school 'Casa Don Bosco' and the Bicentennial B-day of Don Bosco. the kids invited their family to the boarding school and they played games, did skits, and danced |
I am an Alterserver teacher. On Sundays I’m the one responsible
for “recruiting” and training children who want to be alterservers. We do not
have 2-3 alterservers serving at mass like the USA but instead usually 10
alterservers. I have an excel sheet of 30 alterservers with a rotation
schedule. HAha I had to come up with a job list trying to give each alterserver
something to do in mass. You ring the bell during the sacrifice, you two can
hold the tela during communion, you can light the candles,…and you well you can
just stand there and be an “angelito”. Another thing that I realized and that I
thought was funny is that like 80% of the alterservers are girls. I told the
girls to go ask their amigOs, only behaved boys, if they would like the privilege
to serve at mass and well the girls didn’t let me down, the boys are starting
to sign up. Some of the kids like serving at mass so much that some of the kids
ask me to put them on the schedule for both the 9am and 11am mass.
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| The Bicentennial birthday of Don Bosco fell on a Sunday so we celebrated mass outside on the basketball court to accommodate all the people and dances during mass. it was a beautiful Mass. |
I’m also a religion teacher at two schools and I teach at
each them once a week. There are tens and tens of small schools that are in
need of religion teachers. One can make their entire Salesian missionary
experience in just visiting and teaching at schools. The schools are small so
classes I teach will usually have 3rd,4th,and 5th
graders in one classroom which usually brings the total number of kids to 25-35
students. It’s nice to have a permanent teaching role in these schools.
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| Escuela "Naranjal" a small school that I teach religion in |
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| I use the parish moto to get around from place to place |
I also look forward to teaching Confirmation class on Tuesday
nights at our parish church in Yapacani. The kids are 15 & 16 years old.
Just a note confirmation class is 2 years long. After the second year they receive
there sacrament from the Bishop. Prior to this the last time the kids received
formal teaching about religion from the church, was when they were 8 years old
when they received their first communion. So in between the time gap of 8 yrs
old and 15yrs old, the kids do not receive teachings from the church. That’s sad.
They do not have CCD here like in the USA. Also many of the students have not
made their previous sacraments including baptism, so Connor and I teach
everything about the Catholic faith in our Confirmation class. So although I’m
not going around with the Bible to isolated villages to people dressed only in
Loin cloths, I’m still teaching about our Faith to people who have never come
to know Jesus and how to live a Christian lifestyle…. Experiences like these
makes me feel like a missionary.
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| two of our students from our confirmation class |
I am happy to teach others about the truths of our faith so
that they can live a joyful life with Christ and I am very grateful for the
opportunities to teach these kids that I have come to love. I also like being a
good role model to the kids and teaching them good values through my actions
and words. The quality of my visits depends a lot on how much time I spend
preparing for my visits to these different places. I want to give these kids
the best I got. I’m working for the Lord during this experience and it’s all
about Him and His children. To me being a missionary here in Bolivia, is being a
missionary 24-7, this is the reason why I am here in Bolivia and I want to help
the spiritual lives of the children as much as I can. So these things are what make
my experience so fruitful now and in the long run.
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| This is what I feel like at the end of the day |
