Amadine Kontogome, originally from Burkina Faso, is a religious from Sisters Hospitallers since 2008, year when she joined the congregation. She has been in the Pipeline community in Monrovia for her apostolic experience. She was in the community from January until July 29, when she left Liberia after having shared the mission with the community. It has certainly been a very enriching experience for everyone. Sister leaves with many memories in her heart, as she herself has stated, but she also leaves a beautiful memory in our entire team. Today she shares with us her apostolic experience.
Giving my life to God to love and serve him by loving and serving the poorest and most vulnerable brothers and sisters has been the call that I have felt since childhood and that inspired me. This call has matured over the years and in a peculiar way the charism of hospitality has helped me in welcoming and listening.
I thank God for the hospitality I experienced and shared in the smallest details of daily life with my sisters, the residents and the team of staff. In fact, it has given me the opportunity to read, see, discover and experience God’s infinite love and mercy that appears fragile but is nonetheless great and strong in the face of human vulnerability marked by illness.
What’s more, with the residents of the Maria Josefa Recio Mental Rehabilitation center I was able to see and experience the marvels that God achieves in each of them: the blossoming of a new life ready to blossom, which always needs to be accompanied, cared for, nurtured, protected and loved.
I feel edified and evangelised. From them and with them, I learnt more about the value of respect for human dignity, patience and endurance, the discreet and miraculous action of God, faith in human capacity, the simplicity and sincerity of prayer, gratuitousness, the joy of serving, tenderness, compassion, loving and feeling loved, gratitude and hospitality.
For me, this whole experience that I have lived thankfully to God can be summed up in these profound words of Saint Augustine and Saint Benedict Menni, which are still relevant today: ‘the measure of love is to love without measure’ and : ‘There is only one thing worth loving and serving Jesus’.
As I come to the end of my apostolic experience in Monrovia’s community (Liberia) and at the María Josefa Recio mental health center, I would like to take this opportunity I was given and express my deep gratitude to the entire Congregation through Sister Anabela Carneiro, our former Superior General, and to Sister Rosalía Goñi, our Provincial Superior. It was a wonderful, meaningful and enriching experience for me.
Heartfelt thanks to Sister Lourdes Sanz, Superior of the Province of England, and to the sisters of the community: Winnie, Florence and Mary. I really feel grateful. Thanks a million for your warm welcome and great help to live and carry out the mission entrusted to us.
May God in his Son Jesus never cease to clothe us with the bowels of mercy. May he grant us this grace so that we can carry and keep alight the lamb of hospitality by loving and serving our sick brothers and sisters, the recipients of our mission and living images of the compassionate and merciful Christ.