Sunday, April 14, 2013

St. Ann Marie Ebener

Greetings from Gumbo!  It has been a roller coaster couple of weeks here.  I recently started teaching the 5 pre-novices, and we have finished testing and interviewing all of the incoming students for our secondary school, which starts tomorrow!  The incoming students will have 2 weeks of classes in the morning to make sure everyone is on the same level, since they come from a variety of primary schools, before classes start full time May 1.  The students I taught last year moving from S1 to S2 (basically freshman to sophomores) begin May 1.  It has been a nice balance of teaching and administrative work getting everything ready for Opening Day.  Amid all of this, I found out last Thursday that my saintly grandmother passed away, which is where I'll start.

Before I left in September, I had mentally prepared that my grandma probably would pass away during my year on mission and that I would not come back for the funeral if it were to happen.  It was a great blessing to see her and visit with her in the living room on Trexler while both of my grandparents sat in their famous chairs one last time and a moment that will never leave my heart.  While I had hoped I would be able to do it again at the time, in reality, it was a true goodbye.  Being away from family during this time made it extremely difficult, but again, I was blessed to play such a big part of everything thanks to technology.  I skyped all of my cousins the morning of the wake, and skyped again during the wake to be able to "see" everyone, including my grandpa and grandma.  The greatest moment out of all of this was being able to pray the rosary with everyone at the wake through skype.  Just awesome.  For the funeral, we weren't able to skype, but my uncle gave the eulogy and included some thoughts I had emailed him and the video was posted to YouTube so I could watch it.  Again, it was so helpful to be able to be "present", despite being tens of thousands of miles away.  It was and continues to be a very difficult process and time, but I have grown a lot from it and I can't help but smile from ear to ear when I picture my grandma in Heaven.

Throughout the interview process for the secondary school, there is one story I would like to share.  The day after the exam date, there was a girl that came in all by herself that suffers from cerebral palsy.  We had her take the entrance exam and she did pretty well.  We discovered she lives here in Gumbo and had studied at our primary school.  Then a part of the interview went like this:

"Do you live with your parents?"
"No, I live with my siblings."
"Where do your parents live?"
"My father passed away and my mother is mad"
"Who supports you?"
"My uncle sometimes gives us some money and we work (cultivate)"
Then there was a moment of brief silence as she could sense our concern, before she said.
"I just want to learn."

This was yet another moment that made me appreciate all that I have and how these wonderful people have been such a motivation to me and how I think about life.  She has no parents.  I have two absolutely fantastic parents (the best parents in the world in my slightly biased opinion).  She has extremely little support, nobody to really look up to, cerebral palsy, and all she wants to do is learn and improve herself.  Side note- we will be paying her school fees this year.

I have really been thinking about the two of these experiences and I really think about my grandma and how she was always praying, and always praying for others.  More than anything, she prayed for her family.  She prayed that her family would be protected, get the most out of this life, make a difference in this world, and essentially become saints, just like she was.  Like the girl, I have been thinking and planning ways to step my game up and learn and live life to the fullest.  That's the easy part.  Now for the hard part in making it happen.  St. Anne Marie Ebener from Oglesby, pray for us.            

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