Volunteer Missionary Movement (VMM-USA) | home
01 22, 07 We are aware
“We are aware that through our service, we receive far more than we
are able to give. We realize that we are enriched by our encounter with people of other cultures and beliefs. We come to discover that we too are poor in
many ways”.
Spirit and Lifestyle
Last week I mentioned that to stay with our mission we need to celebrate our successes. We also need to celebrate our life and the live of those who have given us the example and the motivation.
Recently I have had to celebrate three lives well-lived.
On November 2, a friend I have known since I was 13, died after 2 years with cancer. Her cousin, to whom my Christmas letter had been forwarded, mentioned that she was in good cheer and active until the last day. I remember that Josie when she was a teacher in a large high school in a poor sector of Montreal she rejoiced that she worked with "real" kids: streetwise, academically challenged, but open, sincere, funny, and like Josie always ready for a lark. Josie always arrived with food! I guess that hadn't changed. She had made so many jars of jam that everyone at her funeral went home with one!
Rachel, a companion when I was a long-term volunteer with Witness for Peace in Nicaragua, wrote that her mother had died after a short struggle with brain cancer. I never met Rachel's parents but I knew from day one that they were totally dedicated to making the world a better place. They lived in a community setting, continually worked against the death penalty. Rachel's dad was in the first Witness for Peace delegation, 150 Christians who came to stand with the people of Nicaragua at the border which the US-funded Contras crossed to kill
and maim, destroy schools and health clinics. All three - Rachel and her parents - totally given to the mission to which they were called.
Last week, in Guatemala, Hanley Denning, the young woman who founded
Camino Seguro (Safe Passage), with the driver, was killed in a collision of a chicken bus with the car in which she was riding. Beth Kloser, a VM at Camino Seguro, was injured with broken wrist and ankle. Claudia Milligan, another VM, also worked at Camino Seguro.
Richard and Susan Schmaltz, who were in VMs in Guatemala in the late nineties, have over the years continued working with Camino Seguro and were there with a delegation at that time. You can go to:
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/070120denning.html
to read a newspaper article on Hanley Denning.
Let us this week keep in our prayers all those involved with Hanley and Camino Seguro, especially those VMs who served there and continue to do so. Let us especially keep in mind Beth. It must be very difficult for her. Here, in Edmonton, I could not speak of this accident. We have in the next three months, starting this week, three groups going down to Nicaragua - high school students, college students, adults. No talk about traffic accidents.
Let us also celebrate these lives, celebrate VMM and how we have been "enriched by our encounter with people of other cultures and beliefs."
Cecily
