What could be the biggest difficulty for a missionary in the Andes Mountains of Peru can turn out to be a great joy. A parish could have anything from 20 to 60 “pueblos” (villages), each with its own identity and organization. It is impossible for one priest to give each village the attention they desire, yet many have an active Christian community that meets every week. This is only possible through the dedication of catechists and missionaries like Benigna and Jaime.
Let me tell you about them.
Benigna Alvarez has been very active in church communities since she began her First Communion preparation 20 years ago. She lives in the Salcca valley, 4km from the town of Combapata. Each morning she works with her widowed mother to prepare the hectare of land they own to plant, care for and finally harvest maize and potatoes. She also cares for the animals they have, a few sheep, a cow and numerous guinea-pigs.
But each afternoon for the last eight years, Benigna rides into Combapata on her bicycle to attend to the busy parish office from 2:00-5:00pm. She also acts as the secretary of the DEC (Department of Evangelization and Catechesis) of the Prelature of Sicuani. A prelature is a geographical jurisdiction similar to that of a diocese.
One of the main jobs is to organize the five day formation courses and retreats that are held six times a year for rural Quechua-speaking catechists from all over the Prelature. That sounds like enough work for anyone, but it is not enough for a dedicated missionary like Benigna.
On Monday evenings she travels by public Combi-Van 14kms down to Culcuire at the end of the Salcca valley road. From there she walks another kilometre over an often muddy track and crosses over a bridge to the other side of the river to the village of Jayobamba. There she first spends an hour with the children singing with them and telling them stories of the life of Jesus. Next come the adults whom Benigna leads in a reflection of the Sunday’s Gospel, applying it to their lives and looking at concrete ways to improve their situation. Sometimes after the final song, the community shares bread and a drink of chocolate.
On Tuesday night Benigna follows the same pattern in the community of Ccolccatuna, closer to her home. On Fridays she heads back down the valley to the large community of Chiara to share the Word of God with the adults. She returns there on Saturdays to sing, teach and play with a group of 30 adolescents.
When she boards the Combi-Van on Mondays, she is accompanied by Jaime Quispe who remains in Culcuire to animate the community that meets in a house there. He is from Chiara and helps Benigna in the meetings there on Fridays and Saturdays.
Jaime had a serious accident when he was young and now suffers from a degenerative bone disease. He cannot walk and gets around in a wheelchair or more often on crutches. Doctors say that nothing can be done for him and can only prescribe painkillers.
But this does not stop Jaime as he continues as a missionary animating communities in their own Quechua language. He is a computer expert and sometimes gets work designing posters for the local “Municipio” - the Town Council."
He is always ready to make his expertise available to the parish preparing formation booklets, song-books, calendars and all the other material that is used in the parish. He once asked if we could help to obtain a motorised wheelchair so that he could extend his missionary activities but so far this has not been possible so he stills gets around on his crutches.
Jaime constantly teaches me a great lesson which is that there is no handicap so great that it prevents us from being a missionary of God's Word within our own reality.
Columban Fr Donald Hornsey has worked for the last 13 years in Peru. He also worked in Brazil and Chile.
Read more from The Far East, August 2014