Incredible Stories

We are hearing incredible stories of Maryknoll Missioners. I'll share a few that have made an impression on me. Again I'm sure that I'm not getting all the details correct, but what follows are what I think I heard.

Sister Meg is a nun who travels into The City (New York City) three days a week to work at the United Nations. She is currently an advocate for women and children's issues. When she was serving in Thailand she tells this story . . . There was a beautiful young girl from a poor family that was working as a waitress in a respectable restaurant. An older man, a general, fell in love with her. They married and had a daughter. She then discovered that he already had another wife and several children with her. The first wife was jealous when she found out about the younger wife. The older woman came to the newest wife's home with some male relatives. The men held her down while the first wife threw acid on her face and upper body. Due to her severe injuries she was brought to the Maryknoll Sisters for medical treatment. There was no one who could do plastic surgery to help her. She stayed with them for about eight months while she healed. She couldn't return to her own family because they wouldn't be able to feed two more people. She was missing her baby daughter so much that she returned to her husband only to discover that the older wife and changed the birth certificate of the child to show that she (the first wife) was the mother! The young woman had no recourse and couldn't prove that she was indeed the mother. As if that wasn't enough, she brought charges against the first wife. In court, the older woman got off scott free! She said that it was an accident.

Brother Jack was telling about the importance of having women in the mission field. His example was that priests had been in Central America for years but hadn't realized that there was a huge domestic violence issue because the women wouldn't talk about it to men. When the Sisters got there, they found out about it. Not only did they learn about it, but they devised a plan to help the women. All the local women were given bells. When their husbands started to beat them they were to ring their bells. All the village women came running to help to end the violence. What an ingenious idea!

Brother Bill was telling about his work with lepers in Egypt, Yemen and now China. Did you know that leprosy is an airborne disease? You breath in the germs, but only 3 - 5% of the population are susceptible and actually get the disease. Lepers get irritations and sores on their feet much like diabetics. In addition, they lose feeling in their extremities as the disease progresses. Often these sores aren't allowed to heal because they don't hurt and continue to get worse until the point an amputation is needed. A type of shoe insert has been developed that can fit into their shoes much like an orthotic that will take the pressure of these sores so that they can heal. With today's knowledge, if a leper seeks medical attention shortly after developing symptoms, medicine will stop the progression of the disease so that sores won't even evelop.