Kibeho

Immaculee with the statue of the

Blessed Virgin Mary

at Kibeho

It took about four hours to get there and, as I said, the passengers in our car were pretty cranky and a little sacrilegious. It was hard to have a good attitude about it because we were uncomfortable the whole way. But when we finally got there, I could definitely feel the power of God in that place.  Immaculee fell to her knees to pray and she cried hard. She told us about the visitations and what an important place this is to Rwanda and to the Catholic Church. There are only a few places on Earth where there have been confirmed sightings of Mary. Because Immaculee was so into it, the power was magnified. We went inside to a little cement block room where Mary first appeared to a humble worker at this school. There were small statues and pictures and plastic film applied to the windows to form a cross. A little candle. Very modest. I knelt to pray along with the others and began with the Hail Mary I had recited countless times as a kid.

Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
pray for us sinners now,
and at the hour of death.
Amen.

It was powerful. Immaculee has been saying over and over that if you say the Rosary a certain number of days with reverence in your heart that your desires will be fulfilled. I can’t say I believed this entirely. I do believe in the power of prayer. I know that when you focus on something with all of your energy it is much more likely to happen. In the back of my mind I had doubts. Not that I doubt the power of God. Maybe I doubt the power of humans to know what is best.