{"id":329348,"date":"2017-07-17T00:10:28","date_gmt":"2017-07-16T22:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/today-in-venezuela\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:07:53","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:07:53","slug":"today-in-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/today-in-venezuela\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\"Venezuela heard on TV…<\/strong> I\u2019m watching the news, continually being interrupted by appeals from the public utility commission. The last one just said: \u201cUrgently needed pharmacy drug…\u201d My God! I jot down the telephone number and call. They tell me that person in need is an elderly woman, that it\u2019s really urgent and that she lives in the same city as me. I quickly contact the lady\u2019s children, but in this moment the situation on the streets doesn\u2019t allow me to go out. We agree to meet the next day, early in the morning, in fron of the community health centre. When we finally meet, the lady asks me: \u201cHow much does the medicine cost?\u201d I asked for it from the United States, but they weren\u2019t able to send it to me.\u201d \u201cNothing, ma\u2019am,\u201d I answer. \u201cLet\u2019s pray together that peace quickly returns to Venezuela.\u201d We don\u2019t know each other but hug and say goodbye. There is more happiness in giving than in receiving<\/strong> My friend calls me: \u201cDo you by any chance have this medicine? I can\u2019t find it anywhere . . .\u201d It happened to be just the medicine that a woman had donated to my parish. In that moment I had thought: \u201cBut will this be useful to anyone?\u201d It\u2019s a very specific medicine…\u201d It was jus the one my friend needed, with the exact dosage information \u2013 and there were 50 pills! God knows what each person needs. The happiness was shared, but mine was greater. \"VenezuelaCreate bridges with people from other Churches<\/strong> I received an SMS: \u201cI would need this medicine, do you have it by chance?\u201d Yes, I had it and asked Armando to take it over to him, since the one asking was an Evangelical like him. I also thought of asking: \u201cIf by any chance you any medicine that we\u2019re looking for, would you return the favor?\u201d She sent me the exact medicine that is hard to find in pharmacies, equipped with a nebulizer. She gave mine to another person who wasn\u2019t able to expectorate because of a strong cough. I was an experience of the Gospel sentence: \u201cGive and it will be given to you.\u201d Moreover, the medicine I received was of a superior quality and with fewer side effects than the one I had before. It\u2019s amazing: when you give, love is transformed into brotherhood. Sunday, day of rest…<\/strong> It\u2019s Sunday!!! Finally I can get some rest! I planned on a very interesting film when, all of a sudden, the doorbell rings. I begin to fear that rest in relaxation is in danger. Seeing my reaction, my son asked if I would like him to tell the person at the door to come back at a nother moment. I almost say yes . . . but no . . . I\u2019ll open it. I see an acquaintance standing there who asks me if I\u2019m busy. She had an urgent look on her face. I let her in. \u201cI just ahvef to talk with you…\u201d \u201cOkay, come in. My husband\u2019s here too. Is it okay if he joins us?\u201d We sit there for three hours listening to her. She tell us she wants a divorce, but before telling it to her husband and filing the papers, she thought of talking to us. It\u2019s not easy to listen to her venting filled with pain, misunderstanding and anger…At the end, many of her doubts are clarified. We conclude with a prayer and the decision to start being the first to love. Thus she returns home with renewed strength and ready for the fight to save her marriage. It was a Sunday spent as the Day of the Lord, in which we think we did what Jesus would have done \u2013 loved without judging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The situation of the South American country becomes more complex each day. As the bishops encourage \u201cevery effort in favor of peace and co-existence based on the law of brotherly love,\u201d some are already becoming involved in providing concrete service to people in need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-329348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}