Today was a strange mixture of religious holiday and normal Sunday for the Khmer people; and of the Fourth Sunday of Advent and Christmas Eve for the Catholic Community. Click here to see some of the day’s activities.
Category: Mission Journal
Christmas Season 2017 #6
We don’t celebrate Christmas at the Deaf Development Programme because this Buddhist country makes no connection between Christmas and the birth of Jesus and we don’t want to introduce the commercialization of Christmas and Santa Claus into the culture. But today we had an unplanned Christmas party thanks to the generosity of the landlady of our DDP office building. Click here to see what happened.
Christmas Season 2017 #5
Every year in Advent and Lent we have a communal reconciliation service, offering the sacrament of reconciliation. This Advent, for the first time we decided to have the service at the Maryknoll office.
Christmas Season 2017 #4
Today Musica Felice and the Ninth Harmonics combined forces to perform a fun Christmas concert to benefit the children’s programs of the Daughters of Charity. Click here to see them in action at the Department of Performing Arts.
Christmas Season 2017 #2
Every year the Don Bosco technical schools have a Christmas Bazaar at which they sell food and student-made items and also sing and dance and just have fun. Click here to see the 2017 bazaar.
Christmas Season 2017 #1
Cambodia is 94% Buddhist and especially outside of the cities there is little understanding of Christianity, and Christmas—which people will have heard of–will be seen as just a western holiday where the foreigners wear Santa Claus costumes and decorate their homes with evergreen trees and lots of ornaments and lights. Christmas is not celebrated throughout the culture at all but most western families and groups will mark the birth of Christ with church services and parties at Christian-based NGOs. Click here to see how the English Catholic community began its Christmas season.
Flavors of Saffron
This evening we had a blessing for the new Flavors of Saffron restaurant opened by a Pakistani refugee family who just recently arrived in Cambodia after fleeing religious persecution in their home country. I have worked with quite a few refugees in my years in Cambodia but have never seen a family work so hard and so fast to get themselves established and in control of their own lives.
Night of the Big Chicken
Today was American Thanksgiving Day and we celebrated here in Cambodia also. It was a regular work day but at the end of the day we met at the Maryknoll office for a festive dinner featuring, as our Cambodian cooks say, the Big Chicken. May we all be thankful for all that we have and share it generously. Click here for photos from the evening.
What do priests do?
A not-uncommon question to priests is “What do you do all day?” So many people see us only on Sunday when they come to mass and don’t have any idea about how we otherwise spend our time. Well, here’s what I did yesterday:
One of our parishioners opened the first Auntie Anne’s pretzel shop in Cambodia and asked me to offering a blessing during the grand opening–which I did. Then I got my picture taken with….is it “Mr. Pretzel”?
Changing Skyline 2
Following up on yesterday’s view of Phnom Penh’s skyline, here is a little more detail. The red arrow on the left points out the Intercontinental Hotel that was the tallest building in Phnom Penh, at ten stories, when I arrived here in 2000. The blue arrow on the right shows the Vattanac Capital Tower which is 39 stories tall and currently the city’s tallest although other taller buildings are under construction.