Uneasy calm

A big "Thank you" to all our friends who responded so propmtly and generously with encouragement and assurances of prayer.  Our friends in Robledo (the neighbourhood where the seminary has its campus) report a day of tense calm.  Yesterday at midday there was chaos and fear as rumours spread and hundreds of worried parents flocked to local schools to collect their children and take them home earlier than normal.  In the afternoon the whole area looked desertic, and in the evening everybody obeyed the curfew "just in case".

Today there was a tense calm in the air.  Educational authorities decided to open all schools, and although they did, many parents opted for not sending their children and wait until Monday hoping that by then things would have gone back to normal.



This particular crisis seems to be over, thankfully, but remember to pray for this city from time to time.  There are very ugly things going on as different armed groups try to reconquer territory and power.  Earlier on this week, two boys, not even teenaegers yet, were cruelly tortured and killed apparently for having crossed one of the millions of imaginary frontiers that divide the heavily populated "comunas" .

Local community under fire

This school is just around the corner from the seminary, and several of the students and personnel have their children there.

Villa Flora and Bello Horizonte are two neighbourhoods that surround the seminary in Medellin.  For the last couple of days, there have been intense exchanges of gunfire among local gangs, and one of these "combos" has lost some of its men, and has in response declared a sort of martial law in the area.  Today, all the local schools were evacuated in a hurry, after an anonymous communiqué circulated declaring that they would attack the schools that would not comply, and establishing also a curfew after 8 pm starting tonight.

We cannot know yet how this will affect the seminary or its students and personnel, but many of them have their children attending one or other of the schools under threat and the sense of fera and even panic (the latter a word used by more than one of them) is very evident in those I could talk to.  I have just spoken to the seminary´s acting Principal, and he tells me that although the situation is worrying, up to this point there will be no more action taken other than obeying the nightime curfew as a precaution.  If things get uglier in the following hours or days, then other measures, such as suspendindg classes might be considered, but they have not reached that point yet.

I´m posting this with an urgent request for earnest prayer on behalf of the seminary´s community and indeed for the people of the affected neighbourhoods, caught between the vicious crossfire.

(Spanish speakers can check the report in El Colombiano, Medellin´s main newspaper, and from where the picture above was borrowed:  http://www.elcolombiano.com/BancoConocimiento/C/comunidad_de_robledo_bello_horizonte_amanecio_atemorizada_por_panfleto/comunidad_de_robledo_bello_horizonte_amanecio_atemorizada_por_panfleto.asp)