Sr. Veronica Mburu, a Comboni sister from Kenya, talks about her vocation journey and “I feel fulfilled in loving and serving my brothers and sisters”
I come from a Catholic family, and my parents introduced me to a life of faith and dedication to serving others. They taught me to be attentive to the needs of others and to share what I have with them.
From the age of 11, I felt the desire to dedicate my life, but I didn’t know how because I was too young to understand religious life. I admired the priests serving in our parish and wanted to be like them. It was only when I started secondary school that I found out that, as a woman, I could not become a priest.
I joined a Protestant boarding secondary school, where I faced my first trial of faith as a Catholic in the minority. Various missionary sisters and priests occasionally celebrated Mass and gave us insights into religious life. They gave us pamphlets about different congregations to read, but I was not attracted to any of them.
A classmate of mine had a sister who was a Comboni missionary and had received a small book about the life of Comboni. This was it! When I read it, I found it spoke to me deeply. I could identify with Comboni in many ways. His humble background and his eventual ability to inspire faith in others was incredibly inspiring. Despite facing many challenges, he grew in his deep faith in God, which he then passed on to others who were less privileged.
Though I didn’t know the Comboni Missionary Sisters, I read this account of Comboni’s life several times and was deeply touched by his experience of God, his passion to save others from all kinds of slavery, and his ability to inspire others to share this passion.
Although I knew little about religious life, I plucked up the courage to write to the addresses provided at the end of the book. Much to my joy and surprise, the Comboni Sisters responded through their vocation promoter. After exchanging several letters, during which she sent me more books about Comboni, she invited me to the first ‘come and see’.
After my first encounter with the Comboni sisters, I never doubted my vocation again. I felt I was in the right place, and I could see myself in the mission, giving others hope and joy through my encounter with the Lord. I joined the novitiate in Kenya in 2000, and after two years I moved to the novitiate in Uganda, where I took my first vows in 2004.
I was assigned to Ethiopia, where I went with the idea of living the life of a Comboni missionary in mind. I immediately started to experience the challenges of encountering new cultures, languages, rites and community living.
After learning the languages, I began to understand and connect with the people. This enabled me to learn from them while sharing my faith. I was drawn to the field of health, seeing the needs of the mission and following my inner desire to serve as a nurse. It was a way to reach out to society, not only to provide physical healing, but also many other kinds of healing.
After training as a nurse for three years, I dedicated myself fully to this ministry, and I feel those were the happiest days of my life. It is through this ministry that I feel the Lord has used me to touch the lives of many people.
I have witnessed broken families being reconciled simply because they visited the clinic after severe quarrels, where they realised that healing was not only physical, but also social and familial. I often found myself enriched by dialogue with people from different cultures, from which we all learnt a lot.
Such experiences often occurred in the delivery room during childbirth, during home visits for the sick, at funerals, at forced marriages and in many other situations. These encounters were beautiful discoveries for us all, as they allowed us to respectfully listen to each other’s cultures. It was through these kinds of dialogues that I experienced the presence of God in these people, and shared my own experience of God with them.
On the other hand, my professional role required me to perform a lot of bureaucratic tasks and negotiate with government leaders on behalf of the people, which was something I never thought I could do. Advocating for and mediating on behalf of the less privileged requires a great deal of patience and determination.
After encountering many challenges, Comboni did not become discouraged; he saw them as necessary crosses for the work of evangelisation. To this day, challenges exist not to discourage us, but to strengthen our determination to respond to God’s call. I cannot compare my challenges with those of Comboni, even though I often felt the weight of remaining faithful to the mission. My desire to see the fruits of my efforts was often met with frustration, especially when I saw cultural practices that enslave people being perpetuated.
Despite all our efforts to educate and mediate, it was very challenging to witness the oppression and injustices inflicted by leaders on their own people. Working in the health sector enabled me to understand the needs of young people, not only in terms of their physical health, but also their needs, dreams and aspirations for a better future, as well as their need for faith and guidance. Spending time listening to them and working with them on ways to help them find direction and focus in life made me believe in the words of Comboni, ‘Save Africa with Africa’, more than ever.
I never expected my valuable experience to come to an end, and I had to continue it elsewhere. Although I learnt how to organise and orchestrate the clinic to deliver services to the local community, I never expected to provide leadership services within the institute itself. Although I am in my eighth year of service, I still feel like a learner because it is the Lord who leads and I need to continually learn from and listen to Him. One thing that has touched me greatly in this role is the opportunity to encounter others through personal sharing and to accompany them as a witness to God’s work in them. It is not always easy to respect the freedom and choices of others, especially when they do not seem to lead to a life-giving path.
I thank God for the gift of the missionary vocation, through which I feel fulfilled by loving and serving my brothers and sisters.