After a harrowing journey into the African brush where he was held for nearly five months, Sister Suellen Tennyson was released from kidnappers and returned home.
Her ordeal began in Burkina Faso, West Africa. The Marianite Sister was kidnapped late one night in early April, being blindfolded, bound, gagged and placed on the back of a motorcycle and ridden deep into the outback of the dusty scrublands.
A captive of a band of Muslim group, she was handed over to a rival group at one point.
The 83 year old one time international leader of the Marianites of Holy Cross spent five months captive.
Her story about captivity is detailed in the Clarion Herald.
“I thought maybe they were going to leave me sitting on the porch, but all of a sudden they wrapped me up and took me,” Sister Suellen describes. “Whoa, this was not what I thought was going to happen. But from the beginning, I was asking God to please use this for good. I don’t understand why it’s happening; I don’t understand why they took me. And a lot of good has happened – all these people praying.”
Sister Suellen was given a pen and paper to keep track of the days she was held and for chronicling the captivity.
Suellen was deep in the brush, not knowing where she was and unable to find her way back.
“I told my caretaker, ‘I can’t run away – I can’t run, and I don’t know the way!’”
Suellen stayed outside the main shelter used by the captors. She fashioned a tent-like structure out of branches and leaves.
She also began every day with the prayers of the Mass. Depending on the Scriptures she could recall.
“Prayer sustained me,” Suellen explains. “I went through my Mass every day. I did each part of the Mass and received spiritual Communion.
During the day, at least three or four times a day, I would do a spiritual Communion. That was the thing that kept me going because I had nothing.”
During the ordeal, she contracted malaria and lost a total of 20-pounds. She described her diet as spaghetti, sardines, and rice.
“I had many conversations with God,” she told the Clarion.
“I would say, ‘OK, God, what’s your word to me today at this moment?’ Sometimes it was a Scripture passage or a story from Scripture. But, after a while, it was just messages to me. And the one that stayed with me the longest was ‘peaceful patience. You need to be peacefully patient.’”
After time, she was placed on a motorbike and ridden across three rivers to a new location.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh Jesus, is this another group I’m going to have to start up all over again with?’” she said. “But the good news is they had a truck and not a motorcycle. One of the men came to me and said, you can take that jacket off. And he turned to me and he said, ‘You’re free!’ I said, ‘What? I’m free? Who are you?’”
Arriving back in New Orleans on the last day of August, Suellen is safe inside the Archdiocese. She is regaining her strength and using a walker to ensure she doesn’t fall.
“I sang ‘Amazing Grace’ I can’t tell you how many times,” she said. “And I would just add the verse and put how many days I had been in captivity. But I still have just one day to praise the Lord – today.”
