We Would Love
to Keep in Touch!
The Cross is What We Needed
Bolivia is comprised of nine territorial Departments. In its mountainous center is the Department of Cochabamba, whose main administrative city carries the same name. This sprawling city has a population of nearly 1 ¼ million, and is expanding by leaps and bounds. Its climate is an eternal springtime, with plenty of sunshine and rainfall.
La Salette Missionaries came to minister in Bolivia 23 years ago, in the Department of Tarija, one of the southernmost areas of the country. Almost immediately young men asked to join them, and a formation house was set up in Cochabamba where they have lived and ministered for the past 20 years. Soon the international Latin-American novitiate – serving Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia – was established there in one of the fast-growing outlying barrios or neighborhoods. A few years later they established the parish of Our Lady of La Salette in that sector. Today it has two neighborhood chapels attached – Exaltation and Christ Reconciler.
The Voice That Brings Hope
Madagascar has been the object of much media speculation lately – deadly protests, overthrow of government, military takeover, a new leader who dissolved congress and proposed writing a new Constitution to create the Fourth Republic since Independence in 1960.
One of the desperately poor countries of the world, Madagascar was just beginning to get on its feet after prolonged years of corrupt government. There was hope that, with the proclamation of the third Republic in the 1990s, corruption could largely be curbed. But it’s very difficult to eradicate corruption from entrenched customs – legal or otherwise.
As Time Magazine noted in the April 13, 2009 issue, more than just political and social realities have fallen into a vacuum with this takeover. “There are at least 8 million unique species of life on the planet, if not far more, and you could be forgiven for believing that all of them can be found in [the]… rain forest of Madagascar.” Often called a Darwinian paradise, Madagascar contains many endemic life forms – meaning that they are only found there – with 90 % of its plants and 70% of its animals falling into this category. In this time of political upheaval most restraints are forgotten or ignored, and the extinction of thousands of unique life species will be exacerbated. Worse yet is the human misery that is caused.
The Road is Long
Helping to discern vocations to religious and priestly life was a priority for our La Salette Missionaries from the beginning of their ministry in Burma in 1937. Their main concern was building up the local church. Consequently the first men who asked to enter the seminary were directed to the diocesan priestly way of life and ministry. When the La Salettes were forced to leave some 30 years later the diocese of Prome had been established and was prospering.
A few years later one diocesan priest, Fr. Bernard Mya Thein asked to become a La Salette Missionary, and joined the Filipino province. He returned to his homeland at various times in subsequent years. In the late 1980s he recruited young men who also wanted to become La Salette Missionaries. This was in view of returning someday to assure a La Salette presence in Myanmar. That dream came true in November 2005 when five Missionaries were commissioned by the Archbishop of Mandalay to minister at Our Lady’s Shrine in Chanthagone and two neighboring parishes. Since then ten other La Salettes have returned to Myanmar.
Community of Communities
Father Jim Weeks, MS ministers in Las Termas de Rio Hondo, Argentina. He wrote about ministry there.
With the recent addition of Brother Adrian, one of our Bolivian seminarians who recently took his perpetual vows, we now have four La Salettes on our pastoral team: Padre Alfredo Velarde, a native of Argentina who is 55 years old; Padre Juan Miguel “Jack” Garvey, an American Missionary who is 83; myself another American and I am 75; and Brother Adrian Fernandez Gallardo who, at 38 years of age brings youth to our team. Our parish ministry takes in a whole county and in some ways it’s like a whole diocese.
There are two different realities to the parish: the city and the campo or countryside. In the campo we serve 127 chapels and 76 schools. In the city we have the main parish, which has 11 neighborhood chapels or faith communities attached. Our most recent addition here in Las Termas is the new school of Our Lady of La Salette. Only the first part of the building project is finished, which consists of the kindergarten and grades 1 through 4. The land was donated by a parishioner. When finished, it will go from kindergarten through high school. So far most of the funds have come from the weekly cake sales put on by the PTA, a car and motorcycle raffle also done by the PTA, and a state government grant of $150,000.00.
Burma/Myanmar: What’s in a Name?
Semantically returning to its roots, Burma was renamed Myanmar in 1989. Roughly shaped like a parrot, with its beak to the northwest and long tail to the southeast, it is the size of the state of Texas. It is bordered to the west by the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh and India; to the north and east by China, Laos and Thailand; to the south by the
Andaman Sea. It measures 1,250 miles from north to south and 625 miles east to west at the widest. It is completely surrounded by a horseshoe of mountains – the highest rising to 19,296 ft. The Ayeyarwady River flows the length of the country and forms a delta of over 20,000 sq. miles before emptying into the Bay of Bengal. It has a tropical monsoon climate – Jufly to October – that brings much needed water for the rice crops that feed some 56 million inhabitants. It is one of the 10 poorest countries in the world, with teak wood and the best rubies in the world being among its exports. About 97% of the population is Buddhist and many pagodas and Buddhist monasteries can be seen dotting the country. Governed since 1962 by an iron-fisted military junta known as the “State Law and Order Restoration Council,” its public officials are almost exclusively Buddhist army officers. The official language is Burmese, although they have some 240 different languages and dialects – with English still spoken, especially in large cities like Yangon and Mandalay.
Arpita's Story: Pennies for Africa
I would like to tell you a story - a true story – of a young girl with a bigheart, a wild imagination and a far-reaching vision that empowerher. Arpita Joyce is her name. Although she now lives in Massachusetts, she was living in Pennsylvania at the time. But her roots were farther still. She was born in India and came to the United States at the age of three. Today she is ten years old, but this story really begins about four years ago.
The Birth of a Marvelous Idea
One Evening, when she was six, she was taking a walk in the neighborhood with...
La Salette Lay Associate Leads Parish Nursing Course in Madagascar
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| Maureen and husband, AL, in front of pointsettia trees |
My name is Maureen Daniels. I have been a La Salette Lay Associate for about a year, but have been active for several years with the La Salette Missionaries in St. Louis. My husband, Al, and myself visited Madagascar from May 6 to June 2, 2007, after our initial visit three years ago.
With the help of Thandiwe Diamini, Parish Nurse Coordinator from Swaziland, and several team members, we taught a Basic Parish Nurse Preparation Course for the first time to nurses and other volunteers in Namahora, Madagascar. Five nurses and ten church volunteers attended the sessions, held at the Cathedral of Mary Queen in Namahora, a Catholic Parish of 1,600 families, just two miles outside of Morondava, on the west central coast of the island of Madagascar.
Our Invitation to Visit Madagascar
Originally we had discussed the possibility of offering this Nursing course with Bishop Donald Pelletier, a visiting La Salette Missionary from Madagascar and Massachusetts native. We found out that he is involved with Catholic health care ministry for Madagascar. He advised us to visit his diocese and see if we felt it would be a worthwhile effort to offer the course.
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Reconciliation, an essential part for our life in Angola
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| Fr Nunda Venancio, M.S. Born: May 9, 1967 First Profession: Aug. 12, 1990 Ordination: Aug 15, 1996 Ministry: Regional Superior of Angola since Jan 2006 |
Reconciliation, an essential part of our life in Angola
Angola is recovering little by little after forty years of war. Fr. Nunda, with great modesty, accepted to speak about the stages of his vocation in the painful circumstances he knew during his childhood. Deep within these words, one can imagine how Our Lady, the Reconciler, can sustain the hope of her children.
Where did you come from?
I was born and raised in Alto Catumbela, about twenty-five miles east of Ganda, Angola, which is about 180 miles north of Huambo. My parents came from the province of Huambo. I had five brothers and one sister and I was the fourth child. Forced to flee because of the war, my father settled in the big city of Benguela. He was hired as a factory worker in a local paper mill until 1980.
During the war, when I was already in the major seminary, my father’s convoy suffered a serious attack and he was severely burned. He was in a military vehicle, when UNITA troops attacked them. He was burnt over his entire body. He didn’t die. He stayed all night in the bush, suffering terribly. In the morning, he said: “I am going to die. I want to stay on the side of the road, until my family comes to get me with the soldiers.” Fortunately he survived. He walked with great difficulty, up to the city of Cubal where the Sisters of St. Teresa worked. He stayed one month in the hospital.
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Cyclone Strikes Myanmar
Fr. Bernie U Mya Thein, MS wrote from Myanmar about the recovery people are making after that terrible cyclone that struck the country last year.
The Myanmar government refused most outside help in dealing with the aftermath of cyclone Nagris. The little emergency aid that was officially accepted had to go through government channels so that, in the people’s eyes, it appeared that all came directly from the government. Because of the volume of help needed, the government was finally forced to allow Buddhist monasteries to become centers of relief. What relief we could bring had to be done privately.
After a few months the government declared that no more emergency help was necessary. It asked, however, for help in the reconstruction stage. To rebuild after a big storm like Nargis was a tremendous task. Even though the major catastrophe, predicted by many, did not eventually happen; even though whole villages were wiped out; even though whole sections of land were submerged under sea water; even though, basic necessities were mostly unavailable, God took care of his children.
In many areas people used nearby ponds as reservoirs for drinking water. But after the storm, potable water was scarce because these open ponds were filled with all kinds of debris – including corpses of people and animals. Even though they suffered from many diseases, many more people than expected survived.
No room at the table
In his book No Room at the Table Donald Dunson brings to our attention the miserable plight of thousands of children, especially those living in the poorer countries of the world. Many are homeless. Most go to sleep at night hungry. All live without experiencing fulfillment of the most basic human need – to be loved, to be welcomed into someone else’s life. Rather they experience the awful feeling of being cast aside as nobodies. Jesus said, Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me [Mt18:5]. One day the author took a group of abandoned children into a fast-food restaurant in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. Almost immediately the manager asked them to leave because his more affluent customers could easily be offended by the presence of these “street kids.” They took their food and went out into the street to eat. There was no room for them at the table! He then makes a powerful statement. “I came to learn, however, that the sense of welcome had unspoken limits.”