Dignity

Greetings! I pray that this reaches you all in good spirit! Praise God for He has been doing great things here, and please continue to pray for us and more importantly the people of Honduras, for with the good work of God comes satan attempting to ruin it.

This past week has been quite an adventure and the topic of discussion around the house is human dignity....praying and working to restore the diginity of the people here who many times through their situations, feel less than human, and for us to grow more human and to lose the comfort barriers built up in our own lives.

This week has been a week of rest for me, I have spent much of the time laying and reading and trying to walk around with the missioners yelling at me to rest. By the grace of God I managed to finish the dog house and a pen outside before Max arrived on Saturday. Thursday however was a turning point in the week, and was when I had enough strength to start walking again. We had a 3 hour vigil at a little chapel called St. Martins in our neighborhood and the whole week was spent inviting people to the Rosary, Mass, and then Adoration Thursday and thanks be to God, about 75+ people showed up to worship our Lord! Personally, the evening was a turning point in alot of my spirituality when a 14 year old girl, Fatima, gave her testimony while Jesus was exposed in the Blessed Sacrament. She talked for 5-10 minutes, but what was amazing was that she was preaching about suffering and how it is such an important part of our faith. She shared her story and her immense suffering and urged the people there, who she admitted probably suffered much more than her in her life, to carry on in Faith and Love. From then on, as Father Harold offered Confession (for some people there, the first time in years) and others sobbed and carried their burdens, suffering, abuse, etc... up to Jesus and knelt before Him in His Precious Body, and at that moment I thanked and praised God that He had cradled me firmly in the Church, and at the same time I began weeping realizing how little faith I have, and this girl who is 14 and probably been abused and who-knows-what-else, is a Prayer Warrior! It was at this time agian, that I heard Christ ask me in a soft voice if I was willing to give my life as a friar in order to love Him...so please pray for that and for my discernment, and more importantly too, the people who were present at the vigil.

On Saturday night, it was quite a turning point, for we had run a lot of errands, and I was finishing up the dog house and other things, when I heard gun shots, and 5 minutes later, ambulances near our neighborhood, less than 20 minutes later, Maria Luiza, (a girl in our girls program who is 12 and lived with us a few months back when her mother left her with her and her 6 month old baby for a few days, and the baby got sick and passed away, please pray for her and her family) came running to our door screaming, and as I answered the door she told me they had killed her father and cousin.

I had never been around murder before and didnt know what to do, so Allyson and Ethel just comforted her, and prayed with her as we called the friars to come over. To make the long story short, after the friars went back to her house and found her father their, they went and prepared things for the funeral because by law, the body must be buried by 24 hours. This was absolutely horrible, and even worse, not so uncommon here, and all we could do was pray....but the more I thought about it, that was the best thing we can ever do...is to give everything we do to Christ...and thats what Maria did, she prayed with us as she mourned and I praised God that our house was their for her to run to, and that the friars were there to help the family and give some reflections....there is much more to say, but in keeping with her dignity and her family´s dignity I should stop and just ask that your prayers are with her and her family.

Overall, I felt Christ with the family through the funeral procession and carrying of the coffin to the cemetery the next day, and the presence of the family and the devotion of prayer I saw in each one of them touched my heart, but again it brought out in me, my selfishness and weakness I have in my dependence in Christ, which needs to increase more than ever. For in the hands of the young girl was a Rosary as she sobbed and begged God to give back her father, she was sincerely praying, listening, depending on Christ for her strength.

Yesterday, in the afternoon, Ethel and I took a family to IHNFA, a government run organization that helps get children out of extremely abusive houses. Once again, this was the first time I had ever experienced anything like this, and I felt this was none of my business, but as the daughter(another girl from our girls program) told me about her mother and some of the things in the house, I understood why Ethel needed to take them to try and get help, they had been neglecting their children of school, food on some days, and any parenting at all...the atmosphere quickly changed when the young boy of 8 years grabbed my hand and told me he couldnt walk alone in the city, and the little girl took my other hand. Christ shined so clearly through their faces yesterday, and I wanted nothing more than to make their mother a good mother for them, or get them into a house where they would recieve love rather than giving it all day......

it broke my heart, and at Holy Hour last night, i realized more and more how much we HAVE to allow ourselves to learn from what this world calls the "poor and the broken", for as much as we try to teach them, it is really them teaching us and until I understand that fully, I will have a hard time hearing Christ in His whispers, especially when it is the child at our front door whispering for Him.