Monday evenings, during Uruguayan snack time, we go to one of the poorest places in our neighborhood, “La canchita del rosario,” a place with many tin houses that surround a now fenced soccer field. For several years, this was also a very dangerous place due to drug consumption and violence. Our parish priest built a...
Before I started my mission, I did not have to interact with kids very much; and I used to say I didn’t really like them. I would often imagine the rowdy kids that are loud, mess up what had been just cleaned, yell, want everything on demand, cry, fight, and so on. This past month, however,...
It may be easy to assume that being people that want to serve God and pray, we should have little to no problem in our common living. Well, this would be wrong. Trying to decide the activities for the week, deciding who cleans what, who does the dishes, or little things like when someone does...
We have recently organized a small camping trip for ten boys from our neighborhood, ages 8 to 11. For some of them, this is the only chance they get to go outside the area they live in during the whole year. The trip was fun, difficult, but all in all, very blessed....
Rena is a tough woman. She doesn't talk much, looks troubled, and normally has a serious face. I remember my first interactions with her were quite short. I would say Hello, she would say Hi, and that was the end of it. Sometimes I would dare to ask something, she'd respond yes, no, or something...
When I was assigned Uruguay, they told me that it is a very secular country, and that the people are not religious. In our neighborhood, one of the most difficult ones in Montevideo, I have found that people are in fact, in some way, religious. Many people are open to praying with us, they join...