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  Family - Weekend Effect

What M. E. Community Means To Us

Maria & John Otte

You were there when we needed you.

by Maria & John Otte

(Excerpted from Fall 1992 Matrimony magazine)

Marriage Encounter community is many things. Community is a way to keep the Marriage Encounter Weekend growing in our lives. It's an opportunity to share our feelings with others who have forsaken the world's way for God's way. It provides a framework to give us confidence to invite and share the dream with others.

To us, community is especially knowing we'll have someone there who cares when we need them. We could relate many examples. We offer only one.

Maria and I met in 1976. We were both working in Florida. I had moved there from Iowa. She had come from Brazil. We were married in 1980.

On our weekend in February 1988, I agreed to go to Brazil with Maria. We left in December.

I met her family. It was an emotional experience. Live and in the flesh were people that I had heard about all those years, who up until that time had been only two-dimensional images on photographic paper, personified in words appearing in letters which I couldn't read, and ethereal voices coming over a telephone wire. I held them. They hugged me. We shared tears of joy. We were family.

We went back to Brazil in April 1992. I had those same feelings all over again.

We came home in May. Memorial Day we went to visit my family in Illinois. Saturday morning the telephone rang. Maria's sister who lives in Florida said, "Gloria called from Brazil. They took our mother to the hospital Thursday night. She died Friday afternoon. The funeral will be this afternoon. "

I held Maria. We cried together.

It's tough to be so far away at times like these.

As the day progressed, Maria watched the clock. At 1:00 p.m. she said. "The mass is starting." At 3:00 she said, "They are at the cemetery." At 4:00 she said, "They are probably back home and people are leaving."

I took Maria to mass at 4:30. The couple in front of us detected our pain. I explained that Maria's mother had passed away and we couldn't be there. The woman explained they were having a tough weekend too. Their son had drowned in a Memorial Day boating accident in 1991. We comforted them and they comforted us.

As we left mass, Maria said, "I wish our Marriage Encounter friends were here." I said, "Our M. E. friends are here with us in spirit, just like you've been with our family in Brazil in spirit all day”

We returned to Des Moines. As our community learned of our loss, cards, telephone calls, prayers, hugs, and couple love poured forth.

To us, community is knowing we'll have someone there who cares when we need them. They were there. They are there. They will be there. And we'll strive to be there for them when they need us, that's part of God's way.

COMMUNITY IS KNOWING WE'LL HAVE SOMEONE THERE WHO CARES WHEN WE NEED THEM!!!

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