Good evening, Friends, We have had today in Nairobi a beautiful day for weather, a fine sky, and lovely sunset. It started not so well for me this morning after I was trying to recover and feel normal again after drinking some champagne yesterday at a luncheon birthday celebration and this after I had taken at breakfast a pill for calming down my itching skin. There are lots of flowers here and the pollens often make my nose run and sometimes make my skin go crazy. I never thought at lunch about the pill I had taken at breakfast. (I also had seconds on ice creme and seconds on cake, something we rarely get here. I am about 12-14 pounds under what my usual weight is when in the States. I need to fatten up! Really!) So I went overboard, yes, I confess to such!) For the rest of the day I was sleepy, even though I led a mass at 5:15 PM and thought I did rather well for that! I collapsed into bed at 8:45 PM , about an hour and a half before I usually retire, and was gone almost immediately. Anyway, I slept for 12 hours last evening, yes, 12 hours and woke 4 or 5 times to drink water! It is easy to get dehydrated here, much more so than in the more humid Great Lakes area of the USA. However I never get the sinus infections here that I would get during the volatile weather of the midwest USA. There are some definite gains. So . . . no more champagne or anything alcoholic when taking medicine of that kind for controlling allergic reactions! The primaries in the USA are much discussed at mealtimes here, even by the non-Americans in our community. All cannot believe a person like D. Trump could become president, so shocked are they by his behavior toward people whom he does not like or disagrees with. Anyway, there is lots of discussion around this topic. They see a brokered convention coming in July and a blocking of Trump by the party powers with a compromise candidate being chosen. We shall see! One cultural phenomenon that continues to amaze me here is how the having of a child is so critical in the minds of people in this part of the world for having a sense of your being a man or a woman. Not to have a child as your own is to be an incomplete person, to be so out of the cultural norm, to somehow not belong. This came to my attention recently when I was informed that a young man I had been "coaching" during his journey to being ordained a priest was urged by his married brother, a father of a few children, to have a child, to "pass on the family name." And this conversation took place during the week that his family had gathered to witness his ordination to the priesthood! This priest-to-be was able to deflect what his brother was counseling, but did find it painful to be urged to take such actions completely contrary to what he had promised God. And I had heard a little over a year ago that a priest friend of another priest had been approached by his blood sister to have a child and that she or someone else in the family would keep the child as an adopted child, while he could keep the secret with them that he does, after all, have a son, that he is a father. I suspect this mindset is so ingrained in rural societies where having numerous children is very important in order to have as many hands as possible to run a farm and care for livestock. Consecrated celibacy does not sell well, especially in Africa. Actually, I don't think it "sells well' anywhere. So many project their own human needs and desires on to others who choose to live their lives this way and see their choice to be utterly senseless and stupid, barren, a great waste. And it will be all of that unless the person choosing such a way has found a great love in their life that makes it meaningful and is anything but barren and senseless but, instead, fruitful and life-giving. Much of the talk these last two days around here has been about the four nuns of Mother Teresa of Calcutta's Missionaries of Charity in Yemen being martyred, being bound with hands behind their backs, made to prostrate themselves face down on the floor, and then having their heads blown off. One Kenyan, one from Rwanda, and two from India were shot to death by religious fanatics last Friday. This is another incident where our natural instincts get challenged and are made to ponder what would make a person expose themselves to such violence, to risk their lives and lose them in this case. Again, it is only a great love in our life that would make such risks worthwhile and meaningful. Love is stronger than death, and reaches deep into the soul of a person who is open in the least way. Whether it is a mother having to lay down her life for her children, a doctor for a patient, or a missionary to go to a dangerous area to witness to Christ, it is only a great love in one's life that can overcome the natural instinct of self-preservation and risk the loss of our life. I have met numerous members of the Missionaries of Charity since coming here to Africa. They are very impressive people, and their love for Jesus is so attractive. So much does He mean to them that they take great risks for His sake. To understand such people and what motivates them, one has to get inside their world and experience something of what this great love is that motivates them so. I think love that is other-centered will do this for anyone who is quite other-centered in the ways they think, speak, and choose. Of course, many people are too self-focused and so could never understand this attitude of mind and heart. They are so into assuring their own safety and future. It would seem just absurd to them. But that is because they have not yet opened to real love, love willing to lay down one's life for them,a love that takes them out of themselves and their own world of consuming and being entertained and safe. I will leave you for now. I hope to post one or two more letters before Easter comes upon us. God bless, and a happy St. Paddy's day to all of you who read this. Bernie Owens P.S. Five years ago tomorrow, 3/7/11, my mother died, two months shy of her 95th birthday. How time has flown for me since then!