Friday, March 16, 2018

Dear Friends, Six weeks ago is the last time I wrote. I think that is the longest gap between letters on this blog-site. So, so much has been goign on and lots of people pulling at me to respond with this and help with that. So this is part of the long delay. ................................................................................................... My biggest news is that I am returning to the USA for good, yes, for good, on July 26. I have been sitting on this decision for the last 13 months and have had to go through numerous offical channels to inform them about my request to return home. Ineed to have a new kind of work, to make some friends I can relax with beyond the Jesuit community, and especially to get myself back to more stable health.............................................................................................. On August 30 I wrote to my provincial in Chicago a six-page letter requesting to return home and explaining why I was asking for the change. Within two to three days he responded and welcomed me back home whenever I could arrange such. Commitments here, the conclusion of my fund-raising efforts which included leading a plgriamge in Isarel last June, and a number of Amercian visitors coming in November, another group in March and, to my surprise, another group coming in late May/early June made it necessary to delay my departure till this summer. I am OK with that, but I do feel I have finished well doing what God called me here to do. It feels really good to know that ground will be borken to begin building the two buildings I did most of the fund-raising for. Some alte donations from one person in Ireland and another person, a priest from Sweden, has made it possible to finish what we needed and start both buildings. It will take until the following summer, 2019. to finish both buildings. So I feel closure on that task. ................................................................................................. I have had some ups and downs with my stomach and intestines. This started seriously a year ago last February. It prompted tests of stool and blood. Conclusion? I was manifesting lots of stress; no amoebas, no parasites, but lots of dysentary. There some foods here I refuse to eat, especially beef, goat, and pork. (Fish and chicken are OK; veggies and fruits, soups also are wonderful.) The meats I will not eat are very fat and greasy! This condition of dysentary flared up again in late February and after a doctor's visit I have managed only recently to return to normal. Not fun at all!! It so drains me of energy, of my electrolytes. My weight is about 10 pounds less than what I carried when back in the States. Not all that bad, but this means for losing that much weight is not good, NOT GOOD at all. ............................................................................................................. Then, I feel that the work I am doing, guiding retreatants, is getting rather repetitious. I am good at this work, but after five years I really need a change and I find my creative juices begging to express themselves; I would like to create something new and have a combination of ministries to do, not just one as is the case here most of the time. My being creative, initiating new programs like I was free to do when at Manresa, is not going to happen here, especially since I do not speak Swahili and am too old to learn it. So . . . I asked my provincial to send me to a high school in our vast midwest province, unless he had a bigger need to assign me to; to my delight he concurred with my inclination to work at a high school and design a biweekly, evening program for the parents of the students. He could assign me to any one of our schools: in Omaha, in Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Chicago, Cleveland, etc. I was shocked when he asked me to go to Toledo, Ohio and finish there the book I am well into now and eventually ease my way into the life and work of St. John's Jesuit High School in Toledo. So . . . that is where my new home will be starting in mid-August. I am quite pleased with this imminent change and have already started the process of packing and shipping, giving away certain books and other items, and consolidating notes, etc. ........................................................................................................ . I do feel much peace about my decision, lagely because I sense I have accomplished the work God had asked of me when I came here in 2013. It has been a very blessed time. I am among mostly young Jesuits, some of whom are very impressive and well-educated, most in their 40s and showing lots of promise for leadership................................................................................................... I have a growing need for better healthcare. Serious medical needs in Kenya would not be covered by insurance, while in the States much of it would be covered by insurance. ............................................................................................................. On my way back to the States I will spend 4 weeks with some dear friends at their summer home in southern Italy. Their house, I am told, is about 500 feet from the Mediterranean Sea. I expect to really rest when there, swim often, laugh a lot, get in some important reading, and eat some great Italian food. At the start of this four-week stop, I will spend the first day visiting the two major Jesuit churhes in Rome, one of which has the bones of St. John Berchamans, a Jesuit seminarian who died when only 23 years old. The school in Toledo is named after him (St. John's Jesuit H.S.) and I want to pray a mass next to his tomb and beg his prayers for all of us in this new venture in Toledo. ................................................................................................... I need to go. I wish all of you who read this letter a very blessed Easter that is touched a lot with the quiet joy and peace of the risen Christ (Right now it has been so rainy; we are full of mud around here. The farmers have been begging God for rain and they got it!! ) Bernie Owens

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