WHO WE ARE

Comboni Lay Missionaries Uganda is a group of lay men and women, single, married founded here in Uganda in 2000. We are called to live in the Church as brothers and sisters doing evangelization through our way of life, through our professions and the work we do, under the inspiration of Saint Daniel Comboni founder of Comboni Missionaries and Comboni Missionary Sisters.

The centrality of mission and with it the role of the lay people, the ministerial service of the Church and the Comboni charism lived in a “lay” dimension, in Comboni’s example and the demand of the new mission, are the main criteria and motivations which animate the Comboni Lay Missionaries Uganda (CLMU) open to the needs of the local Church and the people

In doing so, we give witness to Christ through our personal, human and Christian maturity, our profession and /or activities of direct evangelization. This work should make every CLMU to find God in the work he/she does and discover God in every situation in the namely; nature, animals, birds just like what St. Ignatius tells us to do.

OUR IDENTITY

Our identity basically constitutes of three dimensions:
Lay: We have to animate the secular reality with our profession (politics, education, health, social work, technical world, mass media, etc.).

Missionary: We have possibly, to leave our own familiar environment in order to go to serve in different locations, where there is a request for our service.

Combonian: We are animated by the spirit of St. Daniel Comboni; spirit of prayer; Self-sacrifice; inspired by the cross of Jesus Christ; courage to leave and go anywhere there is a need; perseverance when difficulties arise, without giving up; spirit of poverty to be satisfied with what we get as income for our Self-reliance; some sort of “elastic” community life.

OUR CHARISM: Reach out to the poor and most abandoned

VISION: CLMU envisions a society of youth and young adults who are transformed by the gospel of Christ and live a responsible, productive, happy and meaningful life.

CORE VALUES
• Social justice
• Empathy
• Love and respect for one another
• Dignity of labour
• Honesty
• sharing

RESPONSIBILITIES OF CLMU

• We are employed both professionally and otherwise and we earn our living from the stipends/wages and salaries that we are paid with from our various places of work

• We participate in most activities in our Parishes of residence including teaching Catechism, leading some association in the Parishes like Married couples, the Parish Youth, Executive wings of the Parish. Many of us who are working are holding responsibilities like heading spiritual aspects of the organizations, responsibilities like leadership in work place roles

• Taking roles assigned to us by the MCCJs like managing a Secondary School and Layibi Spiritual Centre, one of the famous retreat Centres for the religious in East Africa

• Spiritual advisors to very many staffs at our various places of work

• We join the small Christian Communities for prayers in their various communities in the Christian communities
• Coordinating Apostolic Community activities in many parishes we work in

• We visit prisons and needy people like the sick in our communities

• We run our formation program with the other religious congregation in the spirit of Ecumenism which we plan to sustain to learn and be inspired by the different charisms of the other religious congregations to build on our charism of reaching out to the poor and most abandoned in the community

• We join together in hard moments when we lose one of our members of the communities we stay in including other religious groups to console one another in moments of sorrows.

• One of our own members is a formator and teacher with School of Discipleship and Evangelization run by Uganda Charismatic Renewal National Office in Uganda

We CLMU always host the Lent recollection and then all of us participate in the Public way of Cross on good Friday in which some members participate as First Aiders, welfare for the whole occasion and we always take the first station of the cross and others follow in a journey of 6 hours covering over 14 km in Kampala City.

Our next outing as Apostolic Community is having Easter Monday Picnic where we have a lot of activities of playing and laughing which is aimed at relieving the stress of the Lenten period and many members learn and socialize very much there by increasing our social bond as a community and many people open up to share deep stressing personal moments. This is a time always long awaited for in which everyone is equal and there are no Superiors or inferiors. Many congregations bring their novices to attend this get-together.

We also take time to do pastoral work to our people living with HIV/AIDS in organizations where we also work and it is nourishing moment to see how these people living with HIV/AIDS take to God and find consolation by sharing the word of God with them. To share the word of God with the sick means you first empower yourself with the Holy Spirit so that you give what you have. So this challenges us always to be in touch with the word of God.