Sunday, May 31, 2009

And God Shone His Grace on One Rwandan

It's Pentecost Sunday. The priest who gave the sermon at Mass was fund raising for a Kenyan high school that needs $50,000. Before he got to the "asking" part of his sermon, he talked about being born in Rwanda of a wealthy Tutsi family. In the 1960s when the Tutsi's were being persecuted, his family fled to Uganda. In the refugee camp, because of the harsh conditions, his mother and 2 sisters died within a week.

After several years, a brother who had remained in Rwanda had climbed up in social status and invited the family to return. This priest chose to remain in Uganda because he was in school. The family who returned were all killed during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Only the brother survived, missing fingers, with cuts on his body; and this priest said maybe he survived so he could witness his becoming a priest.

Heavy stuff, very heavy... will have to think about that for days. An entire family wiped out, and he has no rancor, no bitterness. Instead of stewing over this big matter, he is taking care of his flock in Kenya - this high school that needs $50,000.

Does that kind of holiness come from the Holy Spirit? How does one keep sane? How does one be productive when one has been through all that?

~~~
On another matter, I've been working on my Facebook site, click here to visit. Facebook has nice photo features, and it's allowed me to connect with some long lost friends/acquaintances. But there's something ephemeral about these internet connections - a sentence thrown out here and there, but no deep exchange. There's a lot of "cutesy" comments posted; and a lot of self-promotion.

By the way, I found out today that Geocities is canceling their free webservice later this year. I almost panicked because my official website was directed to my geocities site. I took care of the matter by redirecting my domain name to my site in palhbooks.com. No change to viewers of my site: they still pop in http://www.ceciliabrainard.com and they go straight to my site in palhbooks.com.

The answer to yesterday's Jack Pot question: Bienvenido Santos.

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