Sherbrooke: The JMS in Mexico City and Yaoundé

By Fr. Alain Léonard, SDB

(Sherbrooke, QC – March 19) – Some 50 young people left the Salesian School of Sherbrooke to experience humanitarian aid (mission trip). Between Tuesday, February 25, and Monday, March 10, the Young Missionaries of the Salesian Movement (JMS) stayed at the boys' boarding schools in Mexico City and Yaoundé, Cameroon, with young people experiencing vulnerable situations.

With their enthusiasm and dynamism, these young people's mission was to appreciate or mitigate differences and capitalize on their similarities to create friendship. The happiness for both groups became contagious. By interacting in simple activities, this happiness occurred around a ball on the playground, around a table sharing a meal without their cell phones to give others their full attention, around a broom, a shovel, or a paintbrush. Then a feeling of pride arose around the Eucharistic table, where they all were united through prayer for themselves and for those for whom life is more difficult. The Eucharist rooted them in something true and authentic.

The Sherbrooke Young Missionaries were also imbued with the Salesian spirit by rubbing shoulders with certain works in Mexico City or Yaoundé and with certain Salesian confreres who assumed responsibility for them: the members of the provincial house, the confreres in the primary and secondary schools, and the community members of the Salesian novitiate. It is in these works that Don Bosco reigns as Father and Master of these beautiful young people.

Back in Quebec, the hearts of our young people will beat for a long time, like those they met in these wonderful countries. They return with the desire, no doubt, to continue doing good around them, to become, in their own way, ambassadors of charitable actions. May the presence of Mary, whom they venerated in the Basilica of Guadalupe, bring us closer to her Son who tells us again: “Whatever you did to one of these little brothers of mine, you did it to me.”