It was raining cats and dogs and it didn’t seem to stop. We sat with Enrique under the roof of our missionary post in the Indian village of El Diamante, watched the kids playing and enjoying the rain, thinking only one thing: will we be able to get to Nuevo Progreso, which was the next … Read more
Many years ago, a villager was walking along the narrow jungle paths, not far from the Native American community by the Ucayali River. Suddenly, he saw a marvelous stone and realized that he found a diamond. He moved to Satipo, sold the diamond and reveled in his riches. That’s what the chieftess of a Native … Read more
Atalaya is a small town in the Ucayali Region of Peru. The town has 30,000 inhabitants, the half of them being Natives who moved here from small communities in the Amazon rainforest. Atalaya is the capital of the Atalaya Province and the Raymondi District. It is actually a port town by the Tambo River that, … Read more
Together with Yanda, an Indonesian Claretian who studies in Lima and lives with other students in the Claretian monastery, we went to the travel agency to buy the tickets for Satipo. For such a demanding journey, we didn’t want to leave anything to chance. The Claretians advised us to choose a bus of high quality. … Read more
In the last four posts, we shared the stories of people who once found themselves at the bottom, but they gathered courage, accepted the help of missionaries and started living a new life. Yes, these stories are shocking; remember Patricia, her loneliness and the fight for her own children. And Milton, who was addicted to … Read more
In my previous post, you read about how Milton managed to hide his cocaine addiction from his wife for a long time and concealed that he was earning money with crime. It all lasted until he was shot in his leg in a shootout with the federal police, and he ended up in a hospital. … Read more
In the previous article, I wrote about Milton who lived most of his life as a drug dealer, drug addict, and a drug gang member. I have already written about his difficult childhood, his anger to his violent father, his love to his mother, and about how he escaped from the boarding school and lived … Read more
One might think that a man who was a part of a criminal group, who was ready to do anything for drugs; rob, participate in murders, even cheat his friends, would never get out of such situation. When we asked Milton Paniagua to share his life story with us, he was hesitant. Not so much … Read more
Patricia never knew her father. When she was six, her mother went away as well. She just took her to a friend’s house and left her there. Patricia never saw her again. This is Patricia’s story. The story of a 27-year-old, whom we met at the mission in Bolivia. It is a story about a … Read more
Last time I wrote about how we arrived to Bolivia from Paraguay, about how we were looking for a chance to serve, about the Claretinians that left us in front of closed door and the Shalom community we visited in hopes of finding new path for us. We found a community When we entered the … Read more
Living with the missionaries in Asunción was an interesting experience. After spending three months in Brazil and one month in Paraguay, we often caught ourselves comparing people from one country to another. I know that this may be unfair and that an estimate doesn’t necessarily reflect all the reality, but still… based on our experience … Read more
God personally reveals himself to us through the poor. Jesus’ role model and actions directed towards the people who are not happy, who are deprived, towards the victims of the greedy and unjust system, and people who are being mocked because they are different – all this represents a message to a Christian. But not … Read more
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