News from Peru

11 October 2017

By Sister Saint Nemese, m.i.c.

 

Pucallpa, October 22, 1960

 

Dear friends of the mission,

When I was a student, a teacher in composition once suggested that a good beginning for a letter would be, “As it is raining today I have decided to write to you”. At the time I did not appreciate the suggestion, but I have since come to think that it did have ist merits; as it is raining today I have made up my mind to write to you all, dear readers of The Precursor. I really took the resolution to do so at 2.30 a.m., when a terrific downpour woke me with a start. Would the tin roof resist the onslaught? Was the Deluge something like this? I wondered. A thunder storm is certainly an efficacious reminder of God’s almighty power. I rose to shut the flood out of my room, then climbed back into bed with my rosary twined around my wrist. However, the clatter of rain and wind and thunder kept me wide awake.

My thoughts wandered to our many pupils who live in flimsy shacks with shaggy thatch roofs, veritable sieves when it rains. How were the poor things faring? Then I remembered that I had not as yet written about my new adopted country. This is how in the middle of the night the tropical rain suggested I should write […]

 

(The Precursor, May-June 1961, p.414)