Author: Charles Dittmeier

New Church Progress

Our first Saturday evening mass at St. Jude Thaddeus School’s multipurpose room is getting close but we’re getting things ready mostly on schedule. Today I took the old altar we used at the World Vision auditorium to the school on top of a tuk-tuk. That’s Sambath, known to three decades of Maryknollers, taking it off the top. While in the hall, I also tested the new sound system and it works. We’re getting there!

New Church Progress

Today we were at St. Jude Thaddeus School where we are going to use their multipurpose room for our Saturday evening masses. Today’s goal was to test their sound system, try out our projector, and see how to arrange the chairs. We had planned originally to put the altar on the red platform and project on the wall behind it but the room has permanent skylights and we found the brightest area of the walls is just where we wanted to project. That is not going to work!

Cleaning up

Today a group of lay missioners in Phnom Penh visited the seminary to talk with the seminarians who will be priests in three years. Then we had dinner together and then Sambath, Chamroeun, and Ratana did the dishes.

Not little green apples….

Cambodians, especially the deaf youth, live a simple lifestyle that is closely linked to nature. Today there was excitement in the morning break when the students discovered two small green mangoes on a tree on our property–unfortunately too far out of reach for even our mango-picker poles.

I love mangoes but the idea of eating a hard, unripe green mango is yechy for me. Cambodians put some sort of salt or spices or something on the green mangoes and think it’s heavenly.

New Church Progress

Our two wicker cabinets and keyboard and processional cross arrived at St. Jude Thaddeus School after a short one kilometer ride from the DK Meeting Centre.

Myra, the school owner, and two staff move our cabinets into a storage area they created for our church materials.

When you’re thirsty….

Just about anything you want to buy in Cambodia can be bought on the street–blue jeans, shoes, raincoat, underwear, coconuts, fried chicken, snails, drinks…. Here is a drink stand. The long poles sticking up out of the green bucket are stalks of sugarcane. They are run through a device like a washing machine wringer to squeeze out the juice. Really good!

New Church Progress

The furniture and equipment from the previous St. Jude Thaddeus School building has now been moved to the new site of the school. Currently it is held in what will be a multipurpose room while the classrooms are being completed.