On the Road Again….

Asian Deaf Catholic Conference

Being reconnected with friends from around the deaf world is one of the best parts of a conference like this. These deaf women are from Mongolia and Korea.
Very special was the reunion with the contingent from the deaf community in Hong Kong, my favorite place.
Judy Wu Man Ha was my Cantonese language tutor, colleague, and dear friend in Hong Kong. It was her continued support and encouragement of the Hong Kong group that brought so many of them to ADCC.

St. Boniface Church

St. Boniface church, the oldest Catholic church in Louisville, is in danger of closing in the current third diocesan reorganization. To try and build support for the continuation of the parish, community leaders met with parishioners after the two Sunday masses today to discuss ideas. I had been helping out as a substitute priest here several times a month.

On the Road Again….

Asian Deaf Catholic Conference

When the first busload of participants arrived, Fr. Park Min Seo, a deaf priest from Seoul, welcomed the new arrivals.
Because people were arriving on so many different flights throughout the day, our first dinner was prepared boxed meals which were quite good.
I was impressed that Fr. Min Seo had recruited so many volunteers to help with the week of the conference and here they were separating the used food containers for recycling!
The venue for the conference was a diocesan youth camp about 15 miles from Seoul and it was a good site for deaf people with good lighting and good sign language sight lines in addition to the natural beauty of the grounds.

On the Road Again….

Phnom Penh’s new airport is named Techo International Airport and it is very large, far beyond the current needs of the city. Part of Cambodian culture is for the whole family, even the village, to go to the airport to see the person off. They arrive at the airport hours early and sit on the floor waiting.
These are four of the deaf people who made up our delegation to the Asian Deaf Catholic Conference. The twins (red shirts) are non-Catholic Christians but the others were all Buddhists!
At the Seoul airport deaf volunteers in orange jackets met all of the deaf people arriving from 20 countries. The volunteers first met us and then we waited with them to meet these two young deaf men from Timor Leste.
Then we all went outside to wait for the large bus that took us to a youth retreat center about fifteen miles outside of town.

On the Road Again….

St. Joseph Church

This is the new St. Joseph Church, now in use for the Cambodian community, and the old seminary building. We use the old St. Joseph Church hall for the English Catholic Community.

This is the Saturday night church venue in St. Jude International School which we use on Saturday nights. One of the changes made after I left was to white albs for all the altar servers.

On the Road Again….

Sorry for the lack of posts from this trip! There have been wi-fi problems all along but today I finally got a special roaming adapter that allows me to connect my computer. Before that we could only connect phones.

The Internet problems have been complemented by time problems. Every day the schedule starts at 7:00 AM and it doesn’t finish until 10:00 or 11:00 PM, and there is no free time except for an hour for meals. There is no opportunity to catch up on work unless I skip something in the schedule. Grueling….

This is a photo of our Cambodian deaf group–interesting because there is not one Catholic deaf person in Cambodia! More on that to come. At the far right of the photo is Fr. Park Min Seo, the deaf priest from the Seoul diocese who is hosting this 4th Asia Deaf Catholic Conference.

On the Road Again….

The best part of a return trip to Cambodia is meeting up with friends. L to R are Wyn, Maria, Charlie, Julie, Pedro, Robert, Kylene, and Kila who have continued the Maryknoll tradition of meeting every Wednesday (now Thursday) for a home liturgy and meal.

Another good part of a return trip to Phnom Penh is being in a city where there are people on the streets, interacting, passing each other, and not just contained in air-conditioned homes and offices and cars.
The new Phnom Penh airport terminal.

The name ot the new Phnom Penh airport which opened a year ago is Techo International Airport. ” Techo” is an honorific, an adjective title given to the Prime Minister and to a few others. it basically means one who is great. So it’s something of an oddity to name an airport Great International. More irritating and confusing is that the way Cambodia has presented the name, the name of the destination appears on flight schedules and gate boards as Techno, not as Phnom Penh. It’s bizarre. Some Cambodian ministry didn’t think this one through. Travelers looking for their flight to Phnom Penh need to know they are looking for Techo.