Poverty Through the Eyes of a Missionary

I was head over heels in love with certain mementos I keep, they’re like my precious treasures unknown to everyone; a place where I used to keep them were hidden in my room, a kind of sanctuary, a private locus sealed with continuity. I had those stamps collected from different countries and places, post cards, books, key holders, rosary beads, stampitas, and photos; they reminded me of my visits to these places where I’d been to, living memories, collection of souvenirs with values deep within. Significant places like my home country where my faith began to grow, along with a diversity of cultures that truly honed and enriched me, meeting those peoples and experiencing their individual differences, made me a real person; vulnerable to the needs and issues of being sane. Across the length of years that I’d spent in keeping those mementos, some friends, relatives and family members contributed in my own, as personal stuffs, memoirs, or proofs of having truly been in those places; from the bottom of my heart, I thank them and indeed, a big difference. With my constant mobility, however, as one called to serve with migrants, there’s difficulty to keep them all, carrying them with me wherever I go, hence, I thought it best to give them away and share with others who like them; be a simple missionary with nothing much as Christ had told his first disciples. It’s part of of my religious vows to put into practice what poverty means; detachment may mean a lot and it embraces nothingness, renunciation – of one’s will that reflects his agenda for the present and future that holds, all gets the bottom line - ‘vow of poverty’ in the context of my religious calling.