Western Jurisdiction 
United Methodist Volunteers In Mission

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By Jeni Gregory
April, 2005

I am very grateful for the opportunity to be here. It has come with a cost, however it does not even come close to the price this community...or even this country...has paid. I am very blessed to have my freedom, my health, my family and my life. I need to not take it for granted.

On Tuesday, March 29 was the second anniversary of the fall of Ganta. We had taken the ex-combatants out on a field trip to the cemetery to explain “encapsulation”. That is the manner in which stress is managed. That word simply was too big to try to work with considering the level of formal education that the young men had achieved.

We were standing around this white washed slab of cement, about 5 ft. by 12 ft. in size. We were taking a vow of confidentiality. With fists stretched out, the boys were individually promising to keep our silence around. One of the last boys stated, “On the anniversary of the day that so much damage was done (that he himself had done!) I hereby take an oath that I will keep my silence with the things that I hear in this circle”.

The leaders looked at each other. None of us had remembered that this day was the anniversary.

It was such an odd feeling. Here we were....standing at the gravesite of some of the white missionaries that had long since died, looking directly at the street were the exodus occurred. Literally hundreds of bodies fell as the rebels advanced, bullet holes riddled the buildings, details that we could see from where we stood at the grave site...with the boys that had done the damage.

The paradox, and the peculiarity, of all that was in my line of sight, so nearly caused my knees to literally buckle out from under me.