No Days Off

Before leaving the US, I was honored to be a guest on the Barn Again podcast, hosted by Jonathan Little and Mike Czyz. As I was heading out after the interview, I mentioned that I wanted to do this blog to help keep people in the loop about how the trip was going. They said, “Try to tell the story more with pictures than words.” I think about that every night that I sit down to type. I am not often inclined to think in the moment, “Oh, I should take a picture of this,” So my days end and I have stories to share but I have to keep relying on words. I will try to get better at this.

The title of this blog refers to God and Mary and the graces they are giving me. After a terrific day yesterday, it would have been reasonable to have a less graced day today. Not the case!

This morning began with Basa and me meeting at the Children’s Academy with maybe 12-15 secondary students. These are students who attend boarding school with the support of the Abana Foundation’s scholarships. While they are still home on summer break, we plan to meet with each student individually and hear their stories about how school is going and what they hope for in the future. I plan to share more with you about that as I hear their stories.

This morning’s time was really just an opportunity to get to know the students and have them get to know me a little bit. We asked questions back and forth as a group. I told them about Jill and my kids and where in the world Nebraska is, and they shared what village they are from (one girl walked one and a half hours each way to The Children’s Academy when she was still in primary school) and what they hope to do after school. In the room were kids who want to be teachers, priests, doctors, nurses and even an accountant. It was fun to watch the students interact with each other and act just like junior high and high school kids in the U.S.

This afternoon I was praying in front of a huge, 16-foot tall statue of the Divine Mercy. I will tell more about it in a future post, as it really is a great story. For today, however, I just want to share that as I was walking back to my room after visiting the students at The Children’s Academy, I noticed a group of travelers going up to pray near the statue (it happens every day, many times). This group was different because their were some white people in the group. I can tell you from experience white people in Kibeho are a rarity and attract people’s attention. So, I feel it was very Rwandan of me to notice the white people in the group:)

I kept walking to my room, which is right near the statue. When I sat down in my room, I was pretty sure that I recognized the voice of the woman who was talking. So I went back outside, and sure enough, it was Immaculee Ilibagiza talking to a group of pilgrims she had brought to Kibeho! I was on her second pilgrimage group with three others from Pius X (Julie Schonewise, Jane Connealy and Fr. Meysenburg) and have kept in touch with her. She invited me to briefly tell the group about myself and why I am in Kibeho, and then asked me to join them for dinner later this evening.

A little later, after they had gone, I was praying in front of the statue and two busses pulled up. Out poured a group of pilgrims who had such a beautiful devotion to the Divine Mercy statue. Many left their shoes at the edge of the plaza. They all laid down prostrate and prayed like that for many minutes. It was really quite moving.

One pilgrim had a baby who seemed similar in age to my new grandson (4 months-ish). She didn’t say a word, but simply set this child in my lap to hold while she prayed. It was such a blessing for me to be able to sit there and hold this little child, as I have been missing my grandson, Louie.

The baby started to squawk a bit so I stood up and moved a short distance away to bounce and rock him (might have been a her, not real sure). When the mother was done praying, she came back over to retrieve him and said, in English, “Thank you.” I responded, “No, thank YOU.”

When I went to Immaculee’s “house” (essentially a retreat center) to join them for dinner, they were in a small room listening to the now retired bishop of Gikongoro, the diocese that contains Kibeho. He was an amazing man, who spoke a bit about the genocide and how he survived it by God’s hand. He just radiated joy and peace.

After he spoke and answered questions, I was able to join the group for a very nice dinner. I sat with a man from Sidney, Nebraska, who met his wife in an organic chemistry lab at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Though he and his wife moved to the Boston area many years ago, he still has two sisters in Lincoln. It was fun to visit with them. They are heading to Uganda for a week to help build some schools and hospitals. God bless them!

As I sat listening to the bishop, I just felt so aware of God’s goodness. How He makes Himself known to us in a gazillion ways–big and small. In what was originally a day I expected to lay low and recover from yesterday, I met with a dozen or so extraordinary kids from Kibeho, I prayed with two busloads of pilgrims in front of the Divine Mercy statue, I was given the blessing to hold a little child for a while, and I sat and listened to a holy bishop before having dinner in an amazing retreat center with a group of pilgrims from around the US and even a few other countries.

Dang, I was going to try to be brief. In part because I thought I was going to get to sleep a little earlier tonight, but here it is 11:30 pm and I am still typing away. I will end it here. Congratulations to my fellow Brew Crew fans–13 in a row and still going! To my teacher friends at Pius X, enjoy this last weekend before kids show up on Monday. You will remain in my prayers! To my new friends in Manitowoc, buckle up because I will be ready to talk for hours and hours about my trip to Rwanda. I think people will see me coming down the hallway and run the other direction!

God bless us all…