Lourdes Bernarda Romero Tapias
365 TESTIMONIES OF HOSPITALITY |
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Co-worker |
Colombia |
Lourdes Bernarda Romero Tapias |
When the UCI closed down I was working in the Pathology Laboratory, with a good salary but I was deeply frustrated, my father was hospitalised, and visiting him for 60 nights I saw patients dying, families in crisis who had to take their own syringes with them because of a lack of materials, receiving apathetic treatment from the hospital staff, slow recovery because people could not afford to travel long distances, without anywhere to stay, grieving without no-one to give them a word of comfort, the Chapel closed, working as an ‘honorary chaplain’. I helped to pay the costs of celebrations, transport and accompaniment; the priest led community prayers during the Eucharist, praying for the prosperity of the hospital. Then the Order of St John of God arrived on December 19, 2006, everything changed, everything was Goodness and Happiness; but my laboratory duties took me to Bogotá where I continued helping the community of Brothers with Mass; I sat on the committee for pastoral care recognised by Selare. I was enamoured by what the Brothers were doing; a second community arrived; they set up a Pastoral Care office, and I became a Co-worker with a diploma in religion, and I discovered a passion for literature on Saint John of God; learning discipline, responsibility, love, and working with the local community; the third community arrived; I internalised the transversal nature of service, strategies to discover opportunities, benefactors, help for social projects, leadership training in print principles and values, teamwork, humanisation. I revised my life. I know what love, giving up my energy, striving, dreaming about my work means, which have helped me discover the North Pole of my life.