Author: Charles Dittmeier

Lay Missioner Gathering

I’m not sure what happened but somehow this didn’t get posted yesterday.

Because of rain and conflicting schedules, this month’s gathering was smaller. The lay missioners were from Korea, Italy, Japan, Honduras, and the United States, and Brother John, a seminarian from the Thai Mission Society also came and took this picture.
Ai and Tomoko from the Japan Lay Mission Movement gave a presentation about their work.
Caritas from Korea prepared a lot of really interesting and tasty foods for us!
A picture with Brother John who is from Vietnam.
A farewell photo.

Pchum Ben at DDP-2

After the monks gave their Buddhist blessing, Fr. Charlie had a Catholic blessing, showing that both traditions seek blessings but that the Catholic tradition prays to God to be with us and bless us.

Pchum Ben at DDP

All Souls Day, a commemoration of deceased family and friends, is celebrated on November 2nd in Christianity. The Buddhist equivalent is a two-week long celebration called Pchum Ben. It is a major festival and everyone goes to her or his home village to be with family.

We celebrated Pchum Ben at DDP today, inviting Buddhist monks to come and chant. Here deaf students follow the sign language of an interpreter.
After the Buddhist blessing, Fr. Charlie had a Christian blessing, then we took the above group photo, and then all the staff and students ate a simple meal together before the students left DDP to spend nine days at home with their families.

A Concert Is Coming….

Today Ms. Miwako Fujiwara came to DDP to talk with our students about the next Musica Felice concert to be held. It will benefit DDP and Miwako would like to involve some of the deaf people in parts of the production.

MKLM Retreat Days

Side Trip

In the national park is an actual school basically built of rubbish. The Coconut School is a popular destination for tourists to the area and probably gets some of its operating funds from the visitors.

The story is that this school was established by a Japanese man without a lot of money who used what he could find and scavenge to provide learning for children in this remote are.
The setting of the school is quite a visual spectacle of creativity run wild.
Elephants made from old tires line the access road to the school. Notice the designs made from the caps of plastic bottles beneath the elephant.
On weekends the Rubbish Cafe is open to serve visitors.

MKLM Retreat Days

Addendum

Our MKLM retreat went well and was a good experience. There were also a few other interesting things that were part of that trip to Kirirom National Park.

The center where we stayed had three beautiful dogs, something like a sheepdog, and then there was this horse that I believe thinks he’s a dog. He just wanders around poking into everything like the dogs.
Day and night he just appears and wants to interact like a dog or cat.
The problem part of that is that not all our group appreciated all the animals, especially the BIG ones, and especially when the horse would come up on the porch and stand in front of the door and keep one of the women from getting in or out of her room. Hang Tran here in the photo made friends with the horse.

MKLM Retreat Days

The first part of this past week was spent at Kirirom National Park where the four of us members of Maryknoll Lay Missioners gathered for an annual retreat.

Each morning of the retreat was filled with discussion of ideas about community based on Pope Francis’s encyclical Fratelli Tutti. There were not many people present at the center so we used a convenient table located near the restaurant.
After our morning discussion, we had an activity to help us express and integrate what we had been talking about.
Kylene and Julie returning to the residence building where we had our rooms.
The meals were quite good and we had many settings to choose from as places to eat.
The final evening we had a simple celebration of the eucharist on the porch outside our rooms.

Deaf Week

Friday

The activity for Friday of Deaf Week was making shirts with handprints, signatures, greetings, etc. Here Julie Lawler and I sign the shirts of two students

After making the shirts, the students saw some sign language videos, had some chocolate to drink, and then played some games.