Monday, August 8, 2011

The best victory is won in the company of our creator!

Before we start with the last blog please look at the picture above, I would like to present to you the second best group of singing and dancing primary students in Kenya.  This students made 2nd place in the nation, they are from Don Bosco Makuyu primary school.  I had the joy to accompany them in their trip to the National Music Festival where they won such distinction.   


Now lets go to the blog!




All you who are thirsty,
come to the water. Why spend your money for what is not bread;
your wages for what fails to satisfy?
Is 55
For the last 2 months and a half I have been in Makuyu Kenya doing an accompaniment experience mostly with the technical school students.  Everything has been making change from the moment I left home.  First of all, I had never left home to go abroad to any place.  Secondly, I had never been in a plane and I have a little vertigo.  Thirdly, the language spoken here is neither Spanish nor English, so the first few weeks were tough to assimilate the language.  Then, every time I attended a different workshop it was a change as well from knowing how to do something to starting from the beggining at the new workshop.  When I attended the general fitting I was filing and cutting most of the time and many times I felt like giving up; however, I saw the students and their desire to learn that trait and travel to the capital Nairobi and get a good job.  Then, I realized although it was not my dream to get a job doing general fitting, I had to learn something from general fitting.  After struggling for a few days I finally managed to get something done and I was proud of my achievement.  Then I went to the welding workshop and the same thing happened, I found welding not fitting me.  I would say to myself, “This is not for me, I am not meant to do welding, I am not meant to know how to weld,” once more at the end of the two weeks I spent there I managed to join two metal pieces together.  The last workshop I attended was carpentry, and the same thing happened.  Anxiety was present the first few days and a strong desire to give up.  You might be asking yourself why is he saying all of this?  Many times in life we face different anxieties and changes although they are blessings all the time, we do not like to suffer anymore and therefore label them as bad things in our lives.  We labeled them as anxieties and stressors, and then we do not see them as blessings anymore because we have formed a label for them already.  In my case, the changes I was able to assimilate and the times of stressed overcome were not because of my own strength.  I am not trying to let you know I am very strong and can assimilate any problem or change.  It has being God who has given me the strength to keep going every day and learn something good from everything I have experienced.  The times we label our circumstances as stressors and bad things it is because we are not looking at the circumstance with an objective eye, but, with the American way of looking at things, “stop suffering,” which lead us to be selfish and avoid any kind of discomforting situation.  People here have to adapt to their circumstance, but, also try to better their lives.  At the same time they are being examples for others.  I know one person who has composed over 300 songs, another one who has published a couple of books, I am sure it has not being easy for them, but they do their best.  We should ask the lord through daily prayer the virtue of patience and wisdom to understand everything that happens to us and also do as St. Ignatius Loyola once said “Pray as if everything depended upon God, then act as if everything depended on you.”

Thanks to all of you who contributed with your gifts and prayers!

My Love and Prayers are with you,


Lorenzo Cano

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