SHARING

From the land of mojenos and trinitarios, in San Ignacio de Moxos, Beni Department, Bolivia, is where I feel that God has sent me to live as a Dominican Missionary of the Rosary, fulfilling the Centenary dream of the Congregation: “To search for new Maldonados.”

This place has a lush vegetation and is a land rich in spiritual and cultural spaces. There are many colors and sounds, very typical from the Amazonia. There is the cry of people who are crying out for being respected and assumed in their originality. They keep on searching their “promised land”, their “holy hill”, where native people will find everything that they have lost due to their subjugation towards other people: freedom and material security. Their dream is to live on their own land, under their own administration and this means to have enough food, clothing, and tools. A very small dream that we could see from another perspective. A dream very valid for those whose roots have been nourish following this dream.

From this very beautiful land, where I have been living a month as a “newcomer” I dare to share my short experience. I reach this place on a weekend, after a long trip from Santiago, Chile. I crossed the Andes, the Lake Titicaca, and the Mamore River to finally arrived to San Ignacio de Moxos and find my sisters in Trinidad Community, who are living the dream of our Beatified Ascension Nicol and Ramon Zubieta, being with the most vulnerable people and teach them God’s love with concrete commitment.

Here we are being solidary to elders, we help in the education of children and teenagers, and we accompany monitors in the urban and rural communities. We provide logistical support to those who need to be recognized as part of a territory. I am making my own road day to day and as Rut did, I engage myself with this reality by saying as she did “your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1, 16)

Sister Edith Ponce

San Ignacio de Moxos Community

Bolivia.