The corona virus pandemic has made us experience a change in our normal way of living. When this pandemic began and spread all over the world, we seemed to have no hope left of living anymore. Our activities were stopped, our schools closed; what was the worst of all, was to stay at home, which cut off our physical interaction with our people, especially in our apostolate. Through all these unforeseen experiences, we felt the voice of God calling us to move and act.
A time to grow.
Our daily guide in that moment of covid-19 was prayer, the Word of God and the Holy Eucharist. It was a moment we really felt close to God and we understood that He wanted us to spend more time with Him. We experienced newness in us because we had enough time to put manure on our relationship with Him. This was a unique chance to grow in our faith and allow God to use us to reach out to others especially to those who were most affected by covid-19.
We would often ask ourselves how other people in the same situation were managing with the condition. What could we do? We got encouragement from our co-foundress St. Maria Dominica Mazzarello who in her time, during the typhus outbreak, felt the urge to go out and help those who needed her most.
A few days later, we began to share some inspirations in the community, on how to evangelize and give gestures of love and hope to others.
We began by emptying our stores of food in order to reach out to the most affected in the surrounding area. Later on, through the help from our benefactors we were able to provide foodstuff to some of our employees who were cut off from their monthly salaries and were in need.
We offered some moments of formation to all our employees on how to prevent the quick spread of this pandemic.
We came up with some spiritual initiatives: we offered to the Lord the intentions of those who were suffering, through our daily prayers, adoration, Holy Masses… etc.
We offered a shelter to the parishioners for Sunday Masses since we had a wider space, so we were able to host almost 400 Christians per Sunday. With these initiatives we were able to remain in union with the Lord and Humanity.
This was also a time to share our talents in our community which were not expressed in the past days by the sisters due to various reasons. These included activities like gardening, art and craft, cooking and baking and organizing some recreation moments for the community. All these increased the joy of living together.
We continue to pray and trust in God who listens to his people, that he may save us and heal the world.
Sister Hilarie Nyiramariza, FMA
