Good morning, Friends, It is Sunday for me, in the middle of Saturday night for you. It is rainy, chilly and completely overcast here. We so wish it would rain heavily and for some time. The ground is terribly dry and the maize (African corn) crop is failing due to lack of rain. Life is so tough here for many people....................................................................................................................What moves me to write again so soon after the last letter I wrote only two days ago is the continuing story of this Comboni nun from Costa Rica I am guiding through her 8-day retreat. You have to hear what I have been hearing from her. Again, she lives most of the time in South Sudan, a nation very young and completely destroyed by tribal hatred and war. So many murders and robberies, and no one is imprisoned for doing such. This nun, Sr. Lorena Mulare is her name, tells me that two years ago she and the people she lives with and cares for in a South Sudanese village were being chased by armed rebels killing anyone in their path. These soldiers had a tank with which they were firing shells and cannons. Everyone in the village was fleeing and ran for the bush area to hide. While running a shell landed near Sr. Lorena and knocked her to the ground. It kicked up gravel and sand which got embedded in her leg and some of it cut into her arm. She said, "God, I guess I am going to die today." But after some seconds passed, she felt her leg and arm where the blast of the gravel had cut into her and she brushed away much of it and realized she was not going to die. So, she first fell into a fetal position, trying to protect herself. But her instincts told her this would not do, that she had to get up and continue to try to flee. When she stood up and tried to run, her body, thanks to all of this trauma, would not respond and so all she could do was walk, and that she did and continued into the heavily protective bushes and managed to collapse for rest and regain her composure. So hard was her heart beating that she thought she might die of a heart attack. In the days that followed, she and the villagers survived on roots dug up from the surrounding ground and their water came from a swamp whose water they filtered through the cloth of some of the dresses of the women or shirts of the men and women. ...............................................................................................................................................Then last year, in May, she had another traumatic experience thanks to the warring parties of the government troops and the rebels. Word had gotten out that trouble was coming,, that a battle between the two groups was drawing close to the village where Sr. Lorena and these very simple, very poor people were living. Most of the villagers where Sr. Lorena was living evacuated but she and a few of the other villagers unfortunately delayed and got caught, trapped between the two warring parties. There were bullets coming from both sides and flying over them and near them. The remaining villagers asked Sr. Lorena what to do, so scared were they. She said for all of them to gather in the church and lie down on the floor and together they would pray the rosary for God's protection. That they did and for some 20-25 minutes the shots continued and the killings of rebels and government troops by each other continued. When the shooting stopped, the villagers ventured outside the church and saw that not one bullet had hit the church, that all were safe yet exhausted by the stress of surviving under such violence and death all around them. .......................................................................................................................................... What I tell you here in this letter is still so fresh for me, I am still trying to take it in and appreciate as much as I can the meaning of all of this. I could focus on the idiocy of the tribes hell-bent on destroying each other; but what so moves me is what God is doing through this woman who chooses to risk her own life in order to stay with and care for these people who have no choice but to try to survive under such deadly circumstances. God has to mean so much to you that you would choose to stay with these most vulnerable of His children. No wonder, as I said in my previous letter two days ago, they experience the reality of God as a loving God and that this amazing God cares for them, especially by being with them through Sr. Lorena in their sufferings. ............................................................................................................................................. Yesterday she told me that it was so helpful for her to speak out her story to someone, to me in this case, since it helped her to heal from the trauma and the temptations to resent and hate the warring soldiers, especially the government leaders and rebel leaders. Everything in her tells her that her unresolved dark emotions will come back to eat her up if she does not work at bringing it all to God. She had to return to the places where these events took place, to walk there, to choose again to be with these poorest of the poor who are living so dramatically the passion and dying of Jesus. Only in this way could she come to peace, to reconcile with it all and to let the love of God flow again in her heart and soul. Many of her acquaintances, Combonis and villagers, have died already in this endless conflict. She is very aware of them in heaven now. She added that the gift that has followed is being more sensitive to the risen Jesus, seeing His presence and hope and even joy at times in the villagers and in her fellow Combonis. Yesterday was the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene. In the Gospel reading for mass Mary says to Peter and John on Easter morning, "I have seen the Lord!." This is what Sr. Lorena is telling me and I had to pass it on to you. So, I feel encouraged to look around at the people I am with in the coming days and ask God to give me the freedom from my own worries and burdens to see with a heart of love and faith this same mystery unfolding around me--of the dying and rising of Jesus in the world around me, in Kenya and in the USA. in people who trust Him, even though it costs everything to trust. God is for real! Very, very real. And what a gift it is to see Him in action, doing what death and war, violence and revenge cannot overcome. ....................................................................................................................................... Bernie Owens