BOLIVIA, Carolina Henestrosa Justiniano •
We are nine months away from making the conquest of our longed-for shrine a reality, and as such, we all have had different tasks and committees. In making contributions to the Capital of Grace, we have wanted to keep each person’s enthusiasm alive, so together we can reach the goal proposed for our Shrine: 500,000 consecrations and 3,500 visits to our Wayside Shrine. —
Since setting this goal, the question was: How would we be able to motivate people without it ending up becoming a mechanistic fulfillment of a quota? Then ideas from every member for the Contributions to the Capital of Grace committee began, each month a motivation was distributed to different groups in the Marriage Branch (consecrations, visits to the wayside shrine, praying as a family, consecrating ourselves in a church, etc.).) In September, a group of the Couples’ Branch, the Happy Eleven, was designated to motivate the Branches to visit our Wayside Shrine…that is how the “#Waysideshrinechallenge Yes!” came to be. We had to encourage other groups to visit our Blessed Mother, because more than being the first ones to go…no fire is lit alone.
Creativity comes from the hand of Mary
Therefore on the first Sunday of the month as a family, we went to the Happy Eleven group, to our wayside shrine, and then to pray. While we were sharing at the feet of the Blessed Mother, a question arose: How do we mobilize other groups to come together as a family? At the Blessed Mother’s feet, the response came, a fire is lit with fire, and the Happy Eleven have a gift for infecting and lighting up others with joy. Then we took the first step: we “challenged” another Branch group to visit our wayside shrine, as a family, and when they met the challenge, they had to challenge another group, and so on…a response was not long in coming, and the following weekend, we had three new groups doing the #Waysideshrinechallenge, and more and more life groups united and took more groups to visit our Blessed Mother, strengthening bonds of joy among everyone. What begun as a flicker in the wayside shrine is now a blazing fire of joy around our Blessed Mother, it is ours…
#Waysideshrinechallenge
Original: Spanish. 2 OCTOBER 2019. Translation: Melissa Peña-Janknegt, USA
