Church – Page 14 – Welcome to Cambodia, and…..

Sign of the Times

It’s an interesting indicator of the tumultuous times we live in when our Phnom Penh archbishop, at a priests meeting, gives us all a Christmas gift–a hand sanitizer, complete with his coat of arms! We also got some candy in the bag.

One step at a time

This is the same crane that was silhouetted Saturday night but is now in the Sunday morning daylight. It is still moving the large concrete blocks used to put pressure on the soil to measure its density before they build a church on it.

Preparing the ground

After laying the cornerstone last week, construction of the new church at St. Joseph parish has continued, especially assessing the firmness of the soil and the beginning of driving piles into the ground. Tonight when we finished our evening mass, the workers had departed for the day and left this crane silhouetted against the evening sky.

Farewell

At our Maryknoll liturgy today, Clara Biswas said goodbye. She is with a Christian missionary group but now after many years in Cambodia—and with us–she is returning to Bangladesh. We had to say goodbye to a good friend.

Sr. Lucita

I celebrate mass with the Missionaries of Charity on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and so today, when Sr. Lucita celebrated her 25th anniversary, I concelebrated with Bishop Olivier for a very happy occasion. Sr. Lucita is assigned to the Missionaries’ orphanage in Phnom Penh and we had the celebration in a hall on the top floor.

A group of the children at the Home of Love, getting their first chance to perform traditional Khmer dance.

Bishop Olivier gave out gift bags to the children after they danced.

Sr. Lucita is from India and was given many flowers
and the traditional garlands used in her home country.

Thinking ahead….

If you need a simple little gift to give students or coworkers at the office at Christmas time, these little bags of cookies might be what you want. Bishop Olivier has a social enterprise, CoCo de Takeo Cambodia, that employs the poor and people with disabilities to create all sorts of things to eat and to use from coconuts and all sorts of natural materials.

These cookies are 500 riel a bag and they are actually good! Bishop Olivier gave us some at the last priests meeting.

If you would like to order some, contact Mr. Miek Son at +855 10 956 250 (phone, SMS, WhatsApp). I’m going to order some. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Getting it right….

New Church: One more step – 2

Here are a couple additional photos from yesterday showing more what was going on.

Bishop Olivier blessing the plaque that goes on the cornerstone.

Laying the first of the foundation stones.

New Church: One more step

Today Bishop Olivier presided over the official start of the new church on the grounds at the St. Joseph Church compound.

When we arrived at St. Joseph Church at 9:00 AM, workers were finishing the set up for the ceremony while the parishioners were at the 8:00 AM mass in the present “old” church.

When our English community finished our mass (with baptisms), we found Bishop Olivier and Fr. Chatsirey, the St. Joseph Church pastor, receiving gifts of fruit from various organizations.

Now it’s official! Church construction has begun.

Actually, preliminary work has already started. The stacks of concrete blocks on the left are huge deadweights to measure the firmness and stability of the soil prior to laying the foundation of the church. On the ground next to the concrete blocks are concrete piles which will be driven into the ground to provide a better foundation not prone to sinking or subsidence.

Resuming Parish Masses

This weekend we were able to have our English community masses in person again after a break of many, many months. Click here to see photos of our gatherings.