(Chihuahua) – My name is Rosario, I am 31 years old and I live in La Plata, in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. I am a theatre teacher and I work in the fields of education and pastoral care.
Ever since I was an adolescent, service and encounters with others have played an important role in my life. Through the Canossian sisters, God invited me to serve in another country, in a reality I did not know, to share life and to give of myself once again, with all that I am.
I do not deny that I hesitated before accepting: stepping out of my routine and rearranging commitments I had already made was not easy. What awaited me? Would I really be able to be of use? What could I offer? There were many questions, but the answer was simple: to say yes and entrust myself once again to the Lord, letting Him put everything in its proper place.
Setting Out to Meet Others
And so we set off for Mexico, more precisely for Chihuahua. I use the plural because I was not alone: lay people from Paraguay and Brazil had also been called to this mission, together with the sisters from their communities.
From Argentina to Paraguay, from Paraguay to Lima, from Lima to Mexico and then on to Chihuahua: many hours of travelling, during which I began to find answers far more concrete than I had imagined.
The experience was marked not only by the activities we carried out, but above all by the people with whom we shared each day. Little by little, the places ceased to be simply new spaces and took on names, faces and stories.
Every task, even the seemingly smallest one, took on meaning when we carried it out together. I learned that serving does not always mean doing something extraordinary. Often, it means being available, listening, accompanying, working alongside someone, or simply sharing a moment.
We took part in various service activities and shared daily life with the community of sisters and with the people who work alongside them every day.
It was precisely there that the experience began to transform me.
Giving and Discovering That We Receive
When we think of volunteering, we often imagine setting out to offer something: time, work, knowledge, help. As the days went by, however, I discovered that it was a much deeper relationship. While we were trying to give, we realised we were receiving far more: joy, stories, gestures of closeness and a different way of looking at life.
Faith was made tangible, above all in relationships. I discovered that mission is also lived when we sit down to listen, share a mate, accompany someone through a difficult moment, or recognise in the other person a story to be welcomed with respect and valued for its dignity.
In the midst of intense days, coming together to give thanks, pray and entrust to God all that we had experienced helped us to remember the meaning of our presence. It was not only about doing, but about asking ourselves for whom we were acting and what moved us.
So then, who had gone to help whom?
Perhaps one of the most important lessons was discovering that service does not place one person above another. There is not someone who only gives and someone else who only receives. There is a bond, an encounter. And in that encounter, we can all contribute to change and allow ourselves to be transformed.
An Experience That Continues
Mexico left me with faces, stories and questions, but also with a new way of seeing service. It reminded me that we often wait until we have a great deal before offering something, when in fact we can begin by making available our time, our talents and our presence.
I returned with the certainty that such an experience does not end when we board the plane to go home. Something of what we have lived continues in the way we look at everyday reality, in the people we carry in our hearts and in the decisions we make.
For this reason, if someone were to ask me whether it is worth putting oneself forward for a volunteering experience, I would answer without hesitation: yes. It is an invitation not to be missed: not because it is easy, or because we return with all the answers, but because we have the courage to set out with certain questions and to return with new ones.
It is enough to be available, to open our eyes, to allow ourselves to be encountered by the other, and to have the courage to walk alongside them.
There is more joy in giving than in receiving.
Rosario A. Sancho
