Vocation leaflet in Brazil begins with “Jesus is saying: Let’s go and meet the Congregation “Our Lady of Sion”, Sr. Jacky and Sr. Mary Carmen arrived in Berba on Wednesday, October 3, 2013. The Gospel for October 4, which is also the feast of St. Francis, was Luke 10:1-12. “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” The disciples are sent only to places where Jesus himself wants to go. Jilvaneide and I are visiting sisters, we meet faith communities and individuals in the city of Rio de Janeiro and up in the North-East, Santo Amaro, Divina Pastora, Aracaju and Salvador. We go two by two and come to places where Jesus himself wants to go. After arriving Monday the 7 of October in the evening around 10 pm,  the morning the next day I visited the school of Sion in Rio de Janeiro where my first impression showed me the past glory once shared in …

On October 13, 1992, I, Sr. Juliana, got off the plane Cairo just two days after the great earthquake. Cairo was in a state of emergency and everybody was cleaning up since it had been one of the worst that ever happened in Egypt.

Since the revolution of January 25, 2011 (which led to the deposition of President Mubarak), safety is very fragile in Egypt, and the legal system has unsolvable problems. Crime rate has increased dramatically: indeed a bottomless pit! Where should people hide when they could be killed without any obvious reason? When kidnappings of well-off persons, especially of Christians, happen every day without ever being resolved? A year ago, a young man from a neighbouring village was kidnapped; he has not reappeared till this day. Why? Since ransom was not paid in time? No, it was because the family and neighbours, witnesses of the kidnapping, had gone to the police instead! And so the booty that did not bring any money has probably been disposed of somewhere in the desert. Now, a man from our village, El Berba, has been kidnapped. He was on his way on his moped between the villages, when he was brutally dragged into a Toyota by a group of men. Osamer, the victim, is father of three children aged between 14 …