SPAIN | TESTIMONIES FROM THE LATIN AMERICAN MISSIONARY ENCOUNTER (EMLA)

It has been a few months since I returned to Spain after my meeting with our Latin American VMY brothers in Honduras on the occasion of the mission. Even so, I still have a lot to process about what I lived in this experience. I am still a young man in search of my little niche in the world, to discover and understand what God is calling me to, to give a meaning to my life that somehow justifies my existence. With greater or lesser success, but through prayer. The ad-gentes ad extra mission has always been part of what I always wanted to live, but I could never reach, so when I heard that EMLA existed and that Spain was invited to participate I did not think twice. Yes.

Although we share culture, Christian values and to some extent history, there is a clash between European and Latin views on living. At EMLA, most of them know each other since they have a very good communication network. They work together constantly and most of the young people present are the “visible heads” of their countries, which made me a stranger in their land. From my point of view, the Hispanic-American people are close, homely, and welcoming, and they pointed it out to me. We spent days of missionary formation full of humor, learning, closeness, and prayer, in community, regardless of the origin, whether it was Spain or Brazil (with a different language). I ended up conquered by them. However, even though I lived some wonderful days of encounter, I could not stop thinking about being sent on mission, with emotion, yes, but also with fear.

We all want to save the world, but no one wants to die. Jesus, as the Christians that we are, asks this of us. He sends me: Go out of your land, die for your brothers, give your life, God gives a hundredfold. In this way I tried to live it, beyond myself. This is not “giving myself” from the pride of feeling more than those I was going to accompany for days in their daily lives as a missionary with a savior complex if possible, but from the humility of understanding that the testimony of Faith and Life is given to you by them and that they are the ones who evangelize me, not the other way around. In every sick person, in every story, in every welcome… To open yourself to the mission means to step on the sacred ground that supposes that they open the doors of their homes and their hearts to you, doing it with the same affection that they give you. Giving them a Word of the Lord, door to door, heart to heart, they look forward to it. Nothing more is needed; live in simplicity, humility, and praise to God. And they teach you that very well.

Thanks to my service in the National Coordinating Team of Spain, I have been able to glimpse (and understand) with greater scope the great family that is this association, also verifying thanks to the EMLA that in VMY Latin America there is a future, and even more… there is a present! Young people (and not so young too) who see and feel that this desire of the Virgin crosses borders. Involved with strong commitment in the mission of sharing life and walking together not as isolated countries, but as a great Latin American team, thanks in part to a common language, a situation very different from that of VMY Spain in Europe, something that limits us. That is why this kind of intercontinental meetings are a richness in which I, at least, have felt honored to participate.

I can only thank you for inviting VMY Spain to the Hispanic American Missionary Encounter, with the wish that we all work together in a closer way, despite the fact that there is a whole ocean in between. Thanks to the VMY International team, to the wonderful team that enthusiastically prepared the EMLA, to the young people who participated in this last edition in Honduras and, of course, to my dear Vincentian Missionaries and Daughters of Charity for their service to the needy, for accompanying the young people in moments like these and for your testimony, always. I admire you. 

VMY is worth it, do not forget it.

Josué Romero

VMY Spain