Church – Page 13 – Welcome to Cambodia, and…..

Lay Missioners Meeting

For more than 25 years, lay missioners from different countries who are working in Cambodia have gathered mostly monthly for friendship, socialization, and mutual support. Covid prevented meetings for two years but today the group met at the Maryknoll office to resume the monthly schedule.

Caritas from Korea (R) was a new member of the group joining us today. Here she chats with Julie.

Marie from Haiti (L), here talking to Kila at the break, was another new member.

Pilar from Spain (R) was the third newcomer to the group.

(L to R): Kylene, Marie, Pilar, and Cristina at the break.

Taiwan Trip-Thursday

Thursday and Friday were good days, with more presentations and reports and plans for the future. All in all it was a very good meeting, one of the best of my whole Maryknoll career.

Here are some final photos, of the building and grounds where we met at the Maryknoll house in Taichung.

The front of the Maryknoll center house.

Going around the side of the building to buildings in back.

The Maryknoll language school on the right and an office building on the left.

A glimpse of the Taichung neighborhood setting.

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Taiwan Trip-Wednesday (Part 4)

After visiting the bishop’s office, we walked down the street to another building where a program for migrants was explained. The diocese has so many programs helping people! It is really wonderful!

One building housed a food pantry that operates on a large scale. Here one of the staff showed us a storeroom in the center.

The next stop was this center for people with disabilities. It has a coffee shop and also an area for selling bags, soap, handicrafts, and many other items made by the mostly young people with disabilities.

Bishop Martin (R) really went out of his way to welcome us and accompany us as we visited the different offices and programs in his diocese.

Our final stop for the day was a Chinese banquet at a hotel. It was delicious and also gave us a chance to talk more with some of the diocesan staff.

Taiwan Trip-Wednesday (Part 3)

The office staff had created a special banner just to welcome our group for our visit.

We toured the building and visited the circular chapel on the fourth floor.

A permanent exhibit on the ground floor presented the history of the early days of the Taichung Diocese and featured many Maryknollers.

Fr. John, one of the office staff, gave an interesting overview of the diocese.

Charlie and friend. This type of statue was featured in the Taichung Lantern Festival we visited Sunday night.

Taiwan Trip-Wednesday (Part 2)

The next stop on our afternoon tour was is the unofficial Filipino parish, a community center for refugee workers where they can gather.

Upstairs, in a large hall, 500 Filipino migrant workers gather for mass every Sunday.

The many decorations, statues, and pictures reflect the popular religious devotion of Filipino culture.

One wall has a display of angel statues, probably set up at Christmas time.

At the rear of the large hall, upstairs is an emergency shelter for women who are having employment or medical problems or legal issues.

Taiwan Trip-Wednesday (Part 1)

Today was a fascinating day. We started off with presentations in the morning on regional structures and priorities and then on regional finances. Then in the afternoon we had a wonderful tour of Maryknoll and church programs. It made me really proud to be part of Maryknoll and the Catholic Church.

After lunch we boarded a bus to take us around Taichung City.

Our first stop was the catheral for the diocese. Maryknoll built it in the 1950s.

The next stop was a five-story center for foreign migrant workers who encounter problems in their employment in Taiwan and need assistance. This a retraining area to teach commercial baking.

Another floor has training in commercial sewing.

This is an upstairs dormitory for emergency shelter for men appealing labor decisions or recovering from surgery or caught in legal employment situations.

Downstairs is a recreation area with exercise equipment and places to socialize and talk.

Ooops…

I was trying something new with today’s post about the dance performance when the CACD went on retreat in Takeo Province. I added a 40-second video of the dancing, the first time I’ve used video here, and it’s giving me mixed results. The video keeps pausing, unable to buffer the content quickly enough. Maybe it’s my own slow Internet connection playing back the video or maybe it’s a problem with video on Mailchimp. I’ll have to experiment more but apologies for now if you’re getting results like mine.

CACD Retreat #4

The CACD (Catholic Alliance for Charity and Development) retreatants toured and heard explanations about the different programs offered at the cluster of schools set up by Bishop Olivier in Takeo Province. We also had a chance to see some of the students performing.

Here are some of the student apsara dancers backstage, waiting for their turn to perform.

There are many versions of the classical dance form these young women are performing.

Other students concentrated more on music, albeit with classical dance elements added.

And these young men add a rather non-classical musical element to the performance.

CACD Retreat #3

The CACD retreat gave many of the church and NGO workers the opportunity to see some of the projects started by Bishop Olivier. One of them is CoCo de Takeo, a social enterprise which makes candy and useful and decorative objects from coconuts–of which Cambodia has an abundance!

Coco de Takeo mostly employs people with disabilities and single, poor mothers with no other source of income. Here a Little Person works with large coconut hulls. Notice the teapot and the coconut hull to its left which is being carved to be a decorative holder for the teapot.

Women then extract and trim the coarse, hairy inner shell of the coconut for use in various projects.

Some of the coconut shells are preserved, lacquered, and arranged into decorative hangings that one might find in a restaurant or a tourist business establishment.

Of course, an enterprise centered on coconuts generates a huge pile of husks that cannot be used.

Vietnamese New Year

There is not much of visible Chinese Catholic community in Cambodia but there is a huge Vietnamese Catholic community. Yesterday Bishop Olivier celebrated the Sunday mass on New Year’s Day with one Vietnamese parish. Here he is on his way to mass with them.