Tribute for Sr. Anna Boland

Aloha Fr. Joe,

I tried with no luck to put this on your website.

I received the news of Sister Anna's passing this afternoon, 23 October 2010.  Picking up our mail I saw a letter from Maryknoll and was sure of the sad news inside.  Sure enough.  I came out to the car crying and my wife asked me what was wrong.  We both sat and cried.
We had just spoken of her a few minutes before.  Nine days ago I had a stent put in and my wife asked if I that emailed Sister Anna.  I
told her that I intended to do that.

Sister Anna and I were third cousins.  Although I am twelve years younger we grew up in the same farming community in the Cox Creek
area of Clayton County in NE Iowa.  We had mutual great great grandparents, Daniel Ivory and Bridget Kealy Ivory who were married
in St. Michael's Catholic Church in Danesfort, County Kilkenny, Ireland.  We attended the same one room school house.  She actually
lived on the Ivory family farm a mile from where I was born.

I went to Korea to teach at Seoul American High School in 1963. Sister Anna arrived in 1965.  My wife and I retired in 1997 and Sister Anna a few years later.  She had attended our last Baccalaureate service for the Class of '97.  My wife and I were the speakers.

Sister Anna was a very important part of our lives in Korea. Many times we traveled the two hours to get to her clinic on week-ends. We would take some of our teacher colleagues and military doctors and nurses to met her and to observe her marvelous work.  I helped via the Officer's Wives Club to find funding for her work, especially anti snakebite medicine. I also took my photography students and some of my art students to the county and cattle market in her rural town and we would picnic with her in the shade of the sycamore trees.

Sister Anna was a wonderful human being.  My wife said today that Sister Anna was the most self-actualized women she had every met.
May she Rest In Peace.  She will be dearly missed by all of those who knew and loved her.

Michael F. O'Brien
PO Box 384899
Waikoloa, HI 96738-4899
808-883-8002
onggi@aloha-state.net

BTW, Sister Anna and I were both year of the Rabbit!!  Did I ever meet you in Korea?  Fr. John Heisse was a very good friend of our. We first met him when I said Mass on Yongsan, 8th Army.

We also knew many of the Sister at Jeung Pyeong.
--
Denial is not good for your health.

Michael F. O'Brien
PO Box 384899
Waikoloa, Hawai`i 96738

Fourteen of my books on blurb.com
http://www.blurb.com/my/store/public

U.S. Region and Retirement Community Retreat

By the numbers:

At the retreat: 77
At Evening Prayer yesterday: 7
At weekly rosary for vocations: 17
At the happy hour: 47

**********************

"Its always good when Maryknollers get together." (Fr. Mike Duggan, U.S. Regional superior) in introducing our retreat director.

Father Jim Noonan (Philippines, former Super G, Mekong, Washington, D.C.) directs our U.S. Regional Retreat this year, from October 12~ 14.

The theme is: we are on a marvelous journey that never ends. Every day we have the opportunity to deepen and experience our relationship with our selves, with others' with God and with all creation.

The meaning of life: loving relationships.

The more loving relationships we have, the more fully alive we become.

"Humanity has just entered perhaps the greatest transformation it has ever known..."
"We are mere fractions of our full potential."
"What we shall be has not yet been revealed."
"We are only at the threshold of our life as adults."

Relationship with ourself: become aware how lovable, unique and mysterious we are. We can go through life wearing masks, trying to be someone others think we should be or who we think we should be. We need to know. Our strengths and our weaknesses.

What we think of ourselves determines how we relate to others. Judging others destroys relationships and imposes a burden on us and leads on down a path that leads nowhere. The shortcomings in others that annoy us most usually remind us of our own shortcomings.

A retreat gives us time for silence and solitude to allow the Spirit of the living God to enter more deeply into us. The biggest distraction to growth in self-awareness and awareness of others, of God, and of creation is busy-ness.

Marge and Thoughts

MS. MARGE GAUGHAN, managing editor of Maryknoll Magazine, presented her work with the Classroom Program that helps bring bulk orders of the Maryknoll and Revista magazine into classrooms around the country. This was part of the monthly Food for Thought program for employees and missioners here at the Center.

Sample lesson plans and posters for grades K~5 and 6~12 are given out at the conventions and meetings Marge or other editors attend.

She showed a video of how a third grade teacher of St. Catherine's elementary school in Seattle, Wash., incorporated the program into her class. Also students gave their impressions of the magazine. They focused on an article about Br. Mark Gruenke's work in Namibia.

Spirituality, sacrifice and service come across to the young people and inspire them to do something for those less fortunate. They appreciate the cross cultural mission stories that open up new people and lands to students in this country.

The story of Fr. Bob McCahill comes across in another video of a high school class in Yonkers. N.Y.

Many times the teacher will email and otherwise contact the missioner or the author of the article directly to further personalize the class and make mission come alive.

Fr. Joe Fedora's story about Peru's indigenous people's struggle for clean water in the May~June issue, now coming out, was very well received and inspired students here to write to the United Nations on behalf of the world's poor who are in need of clean water.

A teacher-consultant helps provide the lesson plan which the editors supervise with the art department doing the layout.

Ann Newbuger, a childrens' book author, volunteered her services so Maryknolll's message could get out to the younger students.

In 2010 2,4440 schools are reached out of the 7,094 Catholic schools.

Thats 143,441 magazines that go out to 336 schools in California, 214 in New York, 165 in Pennsylvania,165 in Texas and 137 in Illinois.

Since 2008 the program is free and the financially strapped schools have snapped it yp, thanks in no small part to our mission educators who are very active in those states mentioned above.