Dear Friends, Family, Supporters, & Congregation members,

Where do I begin? It has been a while since my last letter and things are in such a different place than they were two months ago. The tale of these last two months would not have the positive outlook that they have if it wasnt for your continued support. The continual showing through emails, letters, postcards, prayers and the many other forms of support have made me stronger and supported me through this time.

These past two months will have to go down as my darkest period of my mission service. As I wrote my last letter I felt that then I had hit the low point of the year though I was yet to go as low as I did. It is a combination of things I feel that left me lower than I though possible and blindly walking in any direction. There were issues that I had not fully dealt with yet spanning all parts of my service here. The largest would have to be my language skills; I mentioned hills last time with regard to learning Hungarian and I let the hill turn into something bigger than it was. I still have difficulties but the approach is different and I am getting better, slowly. I also had to let go of my control over some things. My attention for many reasons has not always been on the here and now and the work before me. Also co-worker relations have also played their part, at times the most difficult part of the work wasn't the work, it was living with my co-worker. We are very different, which has many benefits but as winter and the cold continued the benefits faded and the negatives took to the surface. There were issues we had let stay dormant to long.

Then spring came out of the winter and everything again changed. As the snow melted, and the warmth came about something clicked inside. Spring is a time for new beginnings; all things have a chance for rebirth and renewal. That led me into the Easter season. This Easter meant something different to me that it ever has before. This year it symbolized how after the resurrection everything was new again. The world changed from what it was before into one where salvation was now attainable through faith. It also was the rebirth of a faith, and this Easter I underwent a rebirth and renewal of personal strength and energy through my faith, which has lifted me up, out of my low points and into a new perspective.

I have forgone this months installment of "what I am doing" to share about my experience or pilgrimage on my journey to Auschwitz/Birkenau. I stated out this journey on a whim. I was offered the chance to go to Poland and visit Krakow with some other Americans, during the Spring Break at my school, which happened to fall during the Holy Week leading up to Easter. I never thought I would ever go to Auschwitz. You read about it and you watch the movies and you tell yourself about the realities and the horror of the Holocaust but none of those things prepared me for the experience that I felt and came away with.

As you walk through Auschwitz you gather the reality and the gravity of what happened. As I walked through the exhibits I was confronted with the harsh realties and atrocities. I don't think I spoke more than a few sentences to anyone to whole time until I was back in Krakow. As I left Auschwitz I was in a daze and when I reached Birkenau (3k walk away) I was shattered by the sheer size of the work camp, it was over 400 acres in size and you can even see where they were planning on expanding to enlarge their capacity. As you walk through the camps many paths the whole history hits you and it forces you to truly understand more about what happened and how it got to where it did.

Just as the day was turning to dusk I had one last thing I needed to do to complete my journey, I needed to visit the section of the camp that was set-aside for Roma. In this part of the camp along with the housing for Roma was also a clinic that was used by the camp Doctors for their "experiments". As I walked down the road through the section, I noticed very few footprints, or anything else. I had seen many tours going on at Birkenau that day and I saw people stop at the entrance to the area but I never saw people enter it. It could be that there isn't much more than foundations of these buildings and one memorial but to me I had to go. The memorial is near the end of the road into the area and when I reached it there I had to sit down. I couldn't hear the screams that I thought I would hear in my head all I heard was silence. In that silence was the pain, sorrow, suffering, anger, hatred and sadness of the victims of these atrocities.

As I sat there I though about where has the world come since then. Surely after seeing the intensity and horror of the Holocaust that destroyed 12 million lives the world would finally put a stop to these sorts of things. Isn’t this one reason we have the United Nations for? Then my heart fell silent again, because I do remember, we have let it happen again and again. For whatever reasons, none of them valid, we, the world acted too slowly in places like the breakup of Yugoslavia, the breakdown in Rwanda and in several other places. I also look at what has changed since the end of 1945 and for the Roma, not as much as it should have. I am here in Ukraine; teaching children who will be discriminated against like no other person in Europe. For many people the end of the Holocaust was the end of the worst, and for the Roma I pray it is but sometimes those horrors do come back.

I share this experience not to bring down your sprits, this is where we, the church come in. The importance of continued work with Roma is key to the changing of attitudes and realities that face them. The church has begun to finally work realistically with and for the Roma people but we need to make sure this continues. Recently it was announced that the European Union has begun a "Decade of Roma Inclusion" which is a beginning to hopefully something much bigger and more prospective.

If by some chance you came upon this letter or it was given to you by someone else and would like to be put on the list of people I send it to then email me at Brenton_NI@yahoo.com. Also if you have any comments or questions please feel free to send me a message at the above address. As with a new letter I have also updated my photos page on my website http://Brenton-ni.blogspot.com Take a chance to see my co-workers family, they are a wonderful family and also see the special section of photos from my trip to Auschwitz/Birkenau.

Lastly, I wan to again share my appreciation for all of the continued prayers and support during my year. If you could include in your prayers the many people who have, are and will suffer of persecution, repression and oppression.

Peace,
Brenton Thompson
Roma Project YAV