Arua, Uganda, Feb 24, 2018 / 01:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Selling everything and moving to Uganda to work with refugees is not likely on many people’s to-do list. In fact, it’s probably the last thing most would consider, especially for a young couple hoping to start a family.
Yet this is exactly what happened to Rachel and Rich Mastrogiacomo when a chain of devastating events and realizations eventually led the couple to undertake one of the most radical and unexpected adventures of their lives – one that would take them to the edge of a war zone in the heart of east Africa, bring them face to face with abject poverty and eventually lead them to the recent adoption of their new daughter.
Though seeds were planted in both of their lives much earlier, the story began when the two got married in 2014. Like any other couple, they were excited about their new life together and eager to start a family.
However, this initial enthusiasm was quickly replaced by pangs of sadness and disappointment as the couple slowly began to realize, after months of trying to become pregnant, that they were facing infertility.
This pain was sharpened when, after becoming foster parents with the Family Missions Company in 2017 in hopes of adopting the three little ones who came to stay with them, the children were unexpectedly returned to their birth mother, again dashing their hopes of becoming parents.
It was after this that Rachel and Rich began to feel an inkling that they were being called to something specific – something they would discover through a process of prayer and radical openness to God’s will and the signs that he provided along the way.
“It’s a blessing to have received this unbelievable gift when we least expected it; God’s fingerprints are all over it.”
Shortly after their foster children were removed, Rachel and Rich attended a healing Mass. At the end, after receiving the anointing of the sick, Rachel was praying when a woman tapped her on shoulder, and told her, “When you went up to receive the anointing of the sick, I heard Jesus say, ‘She will be a mother to many.’ You’re healed.”
Around the same time, Rich – who says he never has dreams – had a very vivid dream of his wife standing on brownish-reddish dirt with trees all around. In the dream, Rachel was holding a baby and was surrounded by children, and as he looked at her, she smiled back at him with a peaceful expression.
Immediately after the dream, Rich began to research South Sudan, and came across multiple articles detailing the horrors of the country’s ongoing conflict and the millions who, having fled war and famine in their homeland, are now living as refugees in neighboring countries. Uganda in particular has been one of the main refugee destinations.
After reading about the situation in South Sudan, Rich began emailing bishops in the area, and immediately got a response from Bishop Sabino Ocan Odoki of Arua, in northern Uganda, saying Rich’s email was an “answer to prayer,” as he had more than a million Sudanese refugees in his diocese and had been praying for lay missionaries to come from America.
The contact with Bishop Odoki – whose diocese sits closely along the border with both the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan – was seen as providential by Rachel and Rich, because ever since she was 10-years-old, Rachel had a special love for Sudan after her father put an image of starving Sudanese children her age on the refrigerator in hopes of fostering a sense of gratitude in her.
The image stuck with Rachel and was in many ways the spark of her desire to be a missionary, and when they got married, both Rachel and Rich had felt a strong call to live a missionary life.
So when Bishop Odoki said he wanted them to come and serve for a month-long “trial run,” the choice was obvious. The couple sold everything and went to Arua in the spring of 2017 with the Family Missions Company.
“There are no words to describe the intense human suffering that we saw among the refugees,” Rachel told CNA Feb. 22.
“It was unlike anything we’ve ever seen, unlike slum poverty. Never have we seen such a vast amount of people living in such poor conditions,” she continued.
South Sudan has been split by a brutal civil war for the past three-and-a-half years. Driven largely by political motives, the conflict has so far prompted some 4 million citizens to flee the country in search of peace, food and work. In August 2017, shortly before Rachel and Rich traveled to Uganda, the African nation had taken in their one-millionth refugee, and the number has continued to climb.
Roughly 85 percent of the refugee settlements Rachel and Rich served are made up of women and children, and while many humanitarian organizations on the ground try to help meet basic needs, “the overall need is absolutely overwhelming.”
They specifically visited the Palorinya refugee settlement in Uganda’s Moyo region, which is the second biggest camp in northern Uganda and as of November 2017 housed some 185,000 refugees, according to Reuters.
While in Arua, Rachel and Rich were able to tour the diocese and participate in the centenary celebration of Moyo Catholic parish, which is the first parish of the diocese of Arua. They also spent time visiting orphans, schoolchildren and youth in prison, and distributed both gifts and donations.
“[We] just loved on the kids,” Rachel said, and recalled what she said is one of her favorite memories of the trip. As they were visiting a school, Rachel and Rich entered one classroom and the children immediately began singing: “The Lord is calling you. You are welcome to lead us all into His kingdom.”
The song “touched our hearts deeply,” she said, explaining that throughout the entire month “we experienced the joy of the Gospel in a fresh and new way. The faith of the people is vibrant; God is their treasure.”
While the basic needs of those living in the camps are many, Rachel said that spiritually speaking, “the greatest need we found was the need to be heard.”
“Pope Francis speaks about a ministry of listening, and this concept came alive for us while we were in the refugee camps,” she said, explaining that when they eventually return to Uganda, they plan to help with spiritual formation, since general catechesis and sacramental preparation are often lacking.
“The people are hungry for more than just food; they truly are hungry for God,” she said.
As the month drew to a close, Rachel said she, her husband and Bishop Odoki all experienced an “overwhelming confirmation” that God was inviting the couple to serve there as full time lay missionaries and live as spiritual parents to the many children and orphans in need.
So while they already see Uganda as their new home, Rachel and Rich headed back to the United States to get things in order. But the story doesn’t end there.
Just three days after returning to the U.S., Rich got a phone call from a lawyer who helps facilitate private adoption, saying a woman had selected him and Rachel to adopt her baby.
“The phone call came out of left field, when we least expected it! Truly, it was wild,” Rachel said.
Rich and Rachel had been in touch with the lawyer several years before, but hadn’t spoken to her since.
However, she had saved their profile, and as the mother was looking through the stack of possible adoptive parents for her unborn child, she was “moved” when she saw Rachel and Rich’s profile and wanted to know more about them.
According to Rachel, when it was explained to the mother that the couple were missionaries living in Uganda, “it struck a deep chord,” as the woman herself was an orphan who had been adopted from Guatemala.
The mother had initially scheduled an abortion during the time that Rachel and Rich were in Uganda, but decided against it and reached out to a crisis pregnancy center. When she heard about Rachel and Rich, she wanted her unborn daughter to be with them, as she had fond memories of the Catholic nuns who raised her until she was adopted.
“We always felt open to adoption, but trusted that God would make it happen in His time,” Rachel said. “It’s a blessing to have received this unbelievable gift when we least expected it; God’s fingerprints are all over it.”
The little girl, who Rachel and Rich named Chiara Maria de Guadalupe Mastrogiacomo, was born Feb. 18.
Both Rachel and Rich were present when their daughter was born. “We wept tears of joy and continue to do so. She has taken our breath away,” Rachel said, adding, “truly, God has turned our mourning into dancing!”
Once the adoption is finalized and little Chiara Maria gets her passport, Rachel and Rich will return to Uganda with their new daughter and continue to serve as lay missionaries in the Arua diocese under the guidance of Bishop Odoki.
While they will wait for Odoki to give them instructions when they arrive, Rachel said she believes they will travel to the refugee settlements in order to provide catechesis, sacramental preparation and trauma counseling.
Rachel, who graduated from the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, holds degrees in theology and religious education, while Rich holds a baccalaureate in Sacred Theology and a licentiate in Spiritual Theology which he obtained from different pontifical universities.
Overall, Rachel said she sees their role as a “funnel of resources” from the U.S. to help this particular group and to raise awareness and funds to address the current humanitarian crisis in the area, which is “one of the most serious in the world right now.”
Pope Francis himself recently put a spotlight on the crisis by declaring Feb. 23, the Friday of the first full week of Lent, as a day of prayer and fasting for the DRC, South Sudan and Syria, all three of which have been ravaged by internal conflict for years.
Though they can cease being missionaries at any time, Rachel said she and Rich feel that their call to be missionaries is a “lifelong vocation,” and don’t see themselves leaving it.
“Pope Francis dreams of a poor Church for the poor and a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything; this has become our dream,” she said. “We want to give everything for Christ in the disguise of the poor and marginalized of society. We want to be on the margins, with the marginalized.”
“That is where Jesus is,” she said, adding, “we cannot wait to return and see see how the Lord will work.”
A funding page for Rachel and Rich can be found here.
[…]
Speaking interreligiously, the difference between fading Christianity and the rise of ISIS zealotry from within Islam is the revealed doctrine of original sin. Three points:
FIRST. this complex doctrine as examined by Ratzinger/Benedict in “An Introduction to Christianity”:
“Terms like original sin, resurrection of the body, Last Judgment, and so on, are only understood at all from this angle, for the seat of original sin is to be sought precisely in this collective net [!] that precedes the individual existence [!] as a sort of spiritual datum, not in any biological legacy passed on between utterly separated individuals. Talk of original sin means just this, that no man can start from scratch any more in a status intigritatis (completely unimpaired by history).”
SECOND, his meaning is, that for each and all of us, we all begin “within the framework of the already existing whole of human life [together!] that stamps and molds him.”
But Islam “start[s] from scratch” without either original sin or history, by dismissing even the era in Arabia prior to Muhammad as “the days of ignorance.” Likewise, in the West (!) we also disconnect and disintegrate into a resentful and post-progressive menagerie of superficial half-truths and worse–cancel-culture “ignorance,” mere intersectionality, and tribal identity politics. Where for Christians however, and as Benedict explains, God stands at both the beginning and at end of the totality of our entangling human history and situation: that is, before the “net” of radical Fallenness, and in the Giftedness of Redemption and Resurrection (Alpha and Omega, both).
THIRD, therefore, each person’s real dignity is found our spiritual and personal struggle–rather than in any accommodation (!) with a fallen world (e.g., by synodally undefining even morality?); or any un-accommodation (!) of our universal human community (e.g., under cultic jihad by ISIS). In our compact world a durable and lasting Fraternity depends, therefore, upon a complete understanding of our shared human nature and, ultimately, upon the reality of the incarnate and whole Jesus Christ.
All politics are ultimately theological…
Ethics and Islam are far apart. Though referred to as “the Religion of Peace”, if the designation wasn’t so unbelievable, it would be laughable. The true God of the Bible enjoins the believer to peace. It is a challenge at times, yet this is how we are to conduct our lives. Peace, not slaughtering our neighbours or those who disagree with us.
Psalm 11:5 The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
Romans 14:19 So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.
Matthew 10:28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Jeremiah 22:3 Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.
Proverbs 10:11 The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.
Proverbs 10:6 Blessings are on the head of the righteous, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.
If a Muslim would like to learn of Jesus and the salvation that comes with belief in His name, it would be an honour to discuss Him with you.
God bless all who read the words of theLord.
The Islamic State Muslims of Congo hereby demonstrate that they can be as savage and cruel as their co-religionists in Nigeria. Francis will offer weak condolences and a vague condemnation of generic religious violence and fundamentalism. Noting changes.
The reality of jihad has faded in Western consciousness in the years since 9/11 (and especially since the advent of the woke and covid madness), but the threat has only grown. Africans, Middle Easterners, and others feel the sword daily. Atrocities occur regularly in the West as well, but they are merely treated as unavoidable facts of life that we must learn to live with. If anything, appeasement and surrender policies have only intensified. The open and constant warfare waged on Christians in the Third World will reach the First soon enough. The question is whether our political and religious leaders will even then allow us to fight back.
Question to the editors: Why doesn’t William Kilpatrick write on Islam here any longer? If he has retired, someone else should pick up the baton. The subject needs attention.
“The subject needs attention.” Indeed!
Maybe we ought to dialogue with Isis and accompany them in their sin. At least that’s what Bergoglio would advocate.
Dear Edward:
Let us join our hearts in prayer for Muslims, that they come to know the exceeding joy of following Jesus Christ, the saviour of mankind.
We are being tested and if we proclaim the Gospel to the follower of Islam, through God’s hand, some will find the truth that is in the Bible and put their confidence in Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Acts 4:12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Thank you for your sincerity and desire to strengthen the Church through the excellence that is Jesus Christ.
Yours in Christ,
Brian