Missionaries of Africa
Initial Formation

Northern Sector, Stagiaires' meeting in Ndola, Zambia
27th February to 3rd March 2012

Our stagiaires' meeting (Northern sector in Zambia/ SAP) was held at Ndola from 27th February to 3rd March. We were six stagiaires: Alphonse-Marie Byishimo (2ndyr), Canisius Bindaba (2yr), Abraha Yohannes Fitiwi, Emmanuel Rulinyuma Lyabonyende, Fidele Macara and Venance Bharotota (all 1st yr) with our coordinator Fr. Camille Konkobo.

We started our meeting with a recollection on 28th morning. In the afternoon, we made our programme. The purpose of that meeting was to share our experience in community life, pastoral work, and spiritual life and in relationships inside and outside our communities.

Our sharing of different experiences of community life and pastoral activities allowed us to realize that we still have many things to learn. Thus, the sessions helped us to learn from each other. It was mutually formative and encouraging. All the sessions were characterized by the climate of confidence, openness and fraternity. I realize that our communities are a precious gift of God and witnesses of the love of Christ in the world. To this end we were urged to take our own responsibility in community life at all levels. I realized that the community life can not be taken for granted but it is to be built by the support of its members.

Every one of us expressed without hesitation the joy and challenges found where we are stationed. We expressed our joy of being welcomed and integrated in our respective communities, after the language course. And also we did not hide the joy we felt when we were welcomed by some families we visited and during pastoral work. We were grateful for our confreres and other people, who unceasingly continue to initiate us in pastoral work. Indeed we are still learning from their experience.

However, we saw also that in community life, we can live sometimes with conflict or tension. This should not be a stumbling block for our formation but a time of growth and conflict management. We are all called by Christ to be his channel of reconciliation and peace first of all in our communities. We found that good communication and dialogue and other attitudes such as humility, listening and accepting others and ourselves as wee, can help us to live a good community life.

We emphasized personal prayer which can help us to make the Word of God our daily companion.

Our confrere's stagiaires of the second year expressed their satisfaction and fulfillment, their challenges of their two years of pastoral work and community life experience. At the end of the meeting Fr. Camille gave us his general observation and remarks for the future.

In short, that meeting was fruitful. It helped us to learn more from the experience of one another and to strengthen our fraternity. I can say that our meeting was not only focused on sessions, it also gave us an opportunity to live with our confreres of Ndola and to discover and to learn some new thing from them. The last night we had a fruitful recreation and discussion with them. I realized that the love of God is greater than that we can imagine. Despite our difference in age and origin, we have all of us the same vocation and one mission. Thus we are united together as brothers of Jesus Christ and children of one Father.

Fidèle Macara Mugalihya (St Anne's Parish Kasama)

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