Learning 'Poco a Poco' in Honduras

By Mary Ann Ofialda

The author, from Iloilo City, is working as a lay missionary in Honduras with the PME Fathers. She worked as a Columban Lay Missionary from August 2003 to April 2006 in Taiwan. In July 2012 she was assigned to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Currently, she is working as a volunteer at a home for the aged, Hogar de Ancianos Maria Eugenia, and in Casa Ángeles, a home for abandoned/orphaned children with severe physical and mental disabilities, and the mission animation project, Ad Gentes. Mary Ann worked in Taiwan as a Columban Lay Missionary from August 2003 to April 2006.

The author, center, with children in Honduras.

‘One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.’– André Gide.

In 2011, when I was accepted into the second level formation in Davao del Sur of the Société des Missions-Étrangères or the Foreign Mission Society of Quebec, known in the Philippines as the PME Fathers, I felt that I had taken a very significant step, venturing out to a unique kind of calling. It was a decision that took a lot of personal discernment, reflection, gradual detachment from my comfort zones as well as support and counsel from my family and close friends. My four months' experience during formation among the B’laan people in the mountains of Little Baguio, Davao del Sur, was a memorable story in itself.