MAKING LOVE GROW…

It seems like yesterday when the Provincial Team in 2012 asked me to come to Ecuador and work in the Social Project “Dreaming for Change”.  I accepted with joy this new experience: although I did not know exactly what it consisted of.

I arrived in Quito on December 31 of the same year accompanied by Sister Maria del Carmen Sagardoy, and already at the airport Fr. Sereno Cozza was waiting for us, who took us to the sisters’ community.

After completing some paperwork in Quito for the VISA, I traveled to Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, where the sisters were waiting for us with a delicious welcome lunch and gestures of affection.

The second week of January I started working in my new mission, with children and adolescents at risk and vulnerability. They come from broken families, with problems of violence, drug addiction, theft, prostitution… and, above all, lacking economic resources. At the beginning it took me a while to adapt to this new reality, their way of relating to each other with insults. But as time went by and I got to know them, I got closer to each one of them through the classes and the attention in the medicine cabinet, healing their wounds, scratches or giving them some pills for their little pains or playing with them at recess. In some way I made up for the love and affection that they don’t have in their family.

Eleven years have passed in which I have learned to value more the defense of life, the integrity of the person, to work as a team with all teachers, administrative staff and various workers who have been going through this Social Project; each contributing their qualities and gifts that God has given us. Making in one way or another life more joyful for these children. Also in the chapel “San Liborio” of the Parish “Santa Martha” I have supported the parish council, the children’s ministry, Legion of Mary, youth ministry, etc. With whom we have lived beautiful moments of celebration and festivities.

The time has come to leave for another community and reviewing the road traveled, I thank God for the life and health he has granted me, thank the different sisters who passed through this community, Father Sereno Cozza Director of the Social Project, for his unconditional support, and allows me to realize part of my missionary dream outside my country.

Sister Hilda Granda

Ecuador