By Nelda Natividad

The Legion of Mary in the Philippines has been sending out Incolae (the plural of Incola!) or lay missionaries to Micronesia and Melanesia for some years now. These lay missionaries support themselves and help strengthen the Church through the Legion of Mary. Nelda Natividad tells us how she has now moved on from being an Incola (part time missionary) to extension worker.

A Dream

As Incola Mariae volunteer, I started as a College Teacher at the Divine Word Institutes in Madang, Papua New Guinea. With fellow Incola-teachers, I organized praesidia among the students and other teachers. When my contact with the school, I was fortunate to get a job where my training as a Certified Accountant would be of use.

As an accountant in a travel agency, I was able to facilitate priest who wanted to fly up to Madang for seminars. This gave me the opportunity to talk to them about the Legion of Mary. Some of them were Filipino Missionaries. My daily two-hour apostolate for the Legion of Mary could easily be attended to with my desk job. And any other spare day or weekend was spent meeting local Legionaries and even visiting for the Comitium. I learned how to drive too and having a car was a blessing in such a huge territory.

Most missions parishes do have a praesidium or two and I realized their potentials if the members could be encouraged to learn more about the Legion. My limited time would not allow a closer ‘learning together,’ so I began to have a dream.

Full-time

On my eight year in Madang, having renewed my working visa thrice, I was emboldened to write the Concilium Legionis Mariae in Dublin to volunteer my services as a full time Extension Worker. It took a while before my application was considered. My employer who used to guarantee my working visa renewal could no longer guarantee my prolonged stay, especially so if I was quitting my job with them. While we had a very good working relationship, it was understood that once I resigned, there was no guarantee that I could return to my old post.

It was a blessing when I finally received the appointment from the Concilium in Ireland. However, I could not start with my full time apostolate unless my ‘working’ visa was duly updated and the paper work took nearly four months! I was very hopeful that everything would workout well since I had totally placed my ‘dream’ in Our Lady’s hands.

No Time to be Afraid

By September, I was ready to move about, among legionaries and undertake full-time duties as Extension Worker and I learned now to keep a diary. The 4-month period of waiting for my visa was spent polishing my pidgin English and now, I saw the great advantage of communicating with local Legionaries in their native tongue. There is instant warmth of a welcome when you speak the local language.

I was soon sent by the Legion to councils and praesidia in adjacent provinces. Please not that the country is a huge mission area thus traveling from one mission post to another takes a day or so, along rough roads or sailing across and long the many rivers. There is no time to be frightened. We pray for a safe journey and therefore hope to reach our destination before the sun sets. How I enjoyed these sailing to and fro.

Another blessing – how eager the Legionaries are to learn more about the Legion of Mary. They welcomed the stress given to the Standing Instructions which made the whole system easy to put into practice.

My appointment is only for one year and how fast time flies. Perhaps other legionaries may nurture the same dream of giving, a year or two to the missions. Extension work not only means new recruits and new praesidia. It also means more workers for the Church.