I didn’t know I was going to find so much love.☀️🙏🏻

‘I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn’. (Anne Frank)

‘I didn’t know I was going to find so much love’: First words she penned in her pristine notepad. Diary of an African Nan. (I love gifting notepads and pens. Lifesavers!). As I was leaving Refugee Centre, she (grandmother) stood at reception, signing copious forms alongside many others. Strangers to each other, collected by common calamity. Yes, all of them together in one place but each one standing alone. Wishing those who incessantly gripe and complain would come and see for themselves.

St. Anne’s afternoon Holy Rosary delightful as always. To be in that sacred space truly a slice of Heaven. Fifteen years ago I asked Father Niall (our Parish Priest for a time) if he would have someone pray Holy Rosary with the gentle folk in St. Anne’s. His reply: ‘How about you do it!’. Seemed an outrageous proposal to me at that time but the seed was sewn coming to fruition in God’s own time. 

In Church three American ladies gladly accepted my prayer. They read and loved it. When I told them that it came to me from EWTN, one of the ladies laughed telling me that her husband one time worked for EWTN.

In Church too, Breda asked Brendan (who uses words sparingly), if he knew the guy Bridget (I) was talking to. ‘He could be from the Horn of Africa and Bridget would make free with him’. replied Brendan dryly. Funny and true!

‘Be who you are meant to be and you will set the world on fire’. (St. Catherine of Sienna)

Another memory! May 2020, first refugees had just arrived in our town. ‘I think I might be involved with our visitors’, I suggested to Jesus one day. ‘You will’, He whispered in my deepest heart. Four years later it is coming to pass and oh how grateful we are to be of assistance to our sisters and brothers in Christ. ‘Blanketiers’, our volunteer WhatsApp group adding new members all the time.

Hearts are being opened. God is blessing our town through the prayers of our visitors, they do not come empty handed! Our little town is not so little anymore.

‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God’. (2Corinthians 3-5)