Church – Page 44 – Welcome to Cambodia, and…..

Wait, it’s Tuesday!

This morning I was riding a motorcycle taxi (a motordupe) across town to our 10:00 AM mass, just like I do every Sunday, and I was thinking it was strange that this microfinance place was open on Sunday.

Then it dawned on me: “This isn’t Sunday! It’s Christmas!” and I considered how it’s just like a Sunday with all of us off from work and going to mass and that I would have the afternoon after mass to catch up on some paperwork.

Then it further dawned on me: “Wait! This isn’t Sunday! And it is Christmas, but it’s a work day in Cambodia” where 94% of the population is Buddhist with zero interest in Christmas and the birth of Christ. As I saw this woman dusting off the wares in her little shop, I realized that this afternoon after mass I would be heading back to work at the Deaf Development Programme. “It’s Tuesday!”, just an ordinary Tuesday and an ordinary workday for all of Cambodia except for the few of us Catholics who had a service on Christmas morning.

Christmas 2018: Christmas Day

We had our second Christmas mass at St. Joseph Church this morning. We had to bring the crib and nativity set from the Korean Diakonos Center where we used them last night. Click here to see some pictures of our congregation today.

Christmas 2018: Christmas Eve

Our Christmas Eve service this year was held at the Korean Center. We had a very good turnout and had to add extra chairs. Click here to see some of our arrangements.

Christmas 2018: Decorating St. Joseph Church

Normally we have most of a week to take down the Advent decorations and replace them with Christmas trimmings, but this year the last Sunday of Advent was today and tomorrow, Christmas Eve, is the beginning of the Christmas season so we had to change the church environment today. Click here to see the crew that gathered for the task.

Christmas 2018: Culture vs. Christianity

In this Buddhist country, probably a good number of people would know that Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus—but they wouldn’t know much about who Jesus is. And the greatly larger portion of the population would associate Christmas with Santa Claus and Father Christmas rather than with Jesus. Santa Clauses are everywhere. They sell things. Jesus is nowhere to be seen.

Some church groups get caught up in this cultural confusion. At the Catholic school where I have mass on Fridays, they contribute to the confusion with this nativity set to which a Christmas bear and Father Christmas have been invited. Maybe I should be satisfied that at least the manger is still empty.

Br. Terry Heinrich Memorial

This weekend as we celebrated the Third Sunday of Advent, we also included a memorial service for Br. Terry Heinrich who died three weeks ago. Click here to see photos from the service.

Advent…with signs of Christmas

At World Vision, we rent their hall and so have to set up for mass every week and decorate the room with banners, candles, etc. When Fr. Bob Wynne was here, he made sure that the seasons were kept distinct and arranged all the changes in colors, banners, etc. Now that he is gone, things sometimes go awry.

Here is a picture of our Advent Wreath as we celebrate the 3rd Sunday of Advent. That’s great. But on the pillar behind the wreath, is a Christmas wreath, a decoration that shouldn’t have gone up yet. Today we were supposed to have violet banners hanging on all the pillars but….

New English Missals

I took 400 new English Missals to World Vision on Saturday night for that community and we rather quickly got them put into the plastic covers with the music books.

Sunday morning I took 300 English Missals to St. Joseph Church and our crew of helpers joined right in to put the missals together with the songbooks in the old plastic covers. Here they are at work.

Fun Play Group at Christmas

A group of parents in the English-speaking Catholic community have formed a Fun Play Group to allow their children to meet and be friends with other children in a fun atmosphere with a little prayer and reflection to help the children grow in a positive setting.

The group met Saturday night after the evening mass and a good time was had by all!

Many of the children–basically from 7 to 12 years old–knew each other from the religious education program on Saturday mornings. As is the norm in our church community here, no two families came from the same country.

In this pre-Christmas season, the group shared the different Christmas traditions and practices from their home country. Here Marta offers the group a Polish Christmas food.

Ann then invited everyone to sample a fruit salad that is served in the Philippines at Christmas time.

The children enjoyed getting together but so did the big kids. Here a group of mothers from five different countries get the chance to talk about Christmas and what it has meant for them and their families.

New English Missals

Because we have a multi-cultural congregation in the English-speaking Catholic community, we provide a paper missal that allows people to read the scripture readings when they are being proclaimed by the lector at mass. For 95+% of our congregation, English is their second, third, or fourth language so sometimes they don’t catch the full meaning of only the spoken word.

The new English Missals for the church’s new liturgical year got lost this year. They were shipped from Ho Chi Minh City on 14 November but we didn’t pick them up here until last Wednesday. Then today I took 400 of them in a tuk-tuk to World Vision where we have our Saturday night mass in their auditorium.