By Sister Rose Agnes MC
Dear Father Seán,
Greetings from Sri Lanka! May the joy, peace and love of Christ our hope be with you and all at Misyon.
I hope that you received my letter stating that Sr Paul Lynette has been sent to Jordan for her new mission. She was replaced by five of us Filipino Missionaries of Charity in Sri Lanka. Thank you so much for sending the magazine, which I pass on to the other Filipina Sisters. All look forward to each issue of Misyon.
Here in Sri Lanka, we have eight mission houses. We recall the tragic war that some of us experienced, the confusion and pain of seeing the people live sleepless nights, the bombings and shooting. We have to be ready at any time to lose our own lives too. Now for sixteen months the ceasefire and the peace process are going on. We could see the joy in the faces of the people as they tried to go back to their own places, though only pieces of stone remained from most of their beautiful houses. Our apostolate was with the refugees, the sick and dying, those with mental disabilities, unwed mothers and so forth.
The beauty of the people here is their generosity and acceptance of everything. They have many different religions but the majority are Buddhists. They are very respectful and good to us.
For our work we have to learn two languages, Tamil, spoken in the north, and Sinhala, spoken in the south. In areas that are mixed we have somehow to manage with both. Much of the time we understand, but service with a smile and full of love doesn’t need a spoken language. So when we go on apostolate and can’t understand the people, we give them a beautiful smile and they themselves try to understand our language, often a mixture of English, Sinhala and Tamil.
Please do pray for us that we may experience a lasting peace here, and for our perseverance.
Yours sincerely,
Sister Rose Agnes