On Saturday, April 15, 2023, MISEVI in Latin America joined together with German Sanchez, newly elected leader of FAVILA, to hear inspirational thoughts concerning the call to be lay missionaries.  There were 50 participants who shared in this virtual meeting, which encouraged all MISEVI members to share the Gospel message.  Here are a few convictions that German shared with us.

• As lay persons, we are at the service of the Gospel. We must actively participate in the world and choose a lifestyle which reflects that.
• As missionaries, we discover the Gospel in the encounter with others, as Jesus did.
• Vincentians, taking the model of following Jesus from Vincent de Paul, always return to this founding experience as a reference.
• We need a community dimension: life in common and with a sense of the common good.
• Our call to mission is rooted in our many cultures from which we gain our identity.
• We work together with those who are most impoverished, where the person is the subject of his/her own life and decisions, not the object of our charity.
• We are cultivators of a spirituality of the encounter with human beings, with our environment and with community, where being is above having or doing on the path to happiness.

Our understanding of who we are as Lay Vincentian Missionaries is constantly growing, deepening, and is empowering us to truly model our lives of loving, as Jesus did, and as St. Vincent DePaul modeled for us.  It is inspiring to realize that, not only has Vincent shared a mission with us, but we are renewed by those who have embraced this mission.  German has given us many inspiring thoughts and stories to accompany these insights.  And the Vincentian Family in Latin America has much to teach us!