Category: Mission Journal

A good friend’s funeral…

Last night, Cambodia time, a funeral was celebrated at the Maryknoll headquarters in Ossining, New York for Fr. Ed McGovern. Ed was a former prosecutor for New York City courts but made a career change and became a Maryknoll priest and was assigned to Cambodia in 2004. He and I lived together until 2008 when he was elected to the General Council for the Maryknoll priests and brothers group. Good guy. I’m going to miss him.

In the photo, Fr. Ray Finch, the Superior General of the Maryknoll priests and brothers, incense’s Ed’s coffin at the beginning of the funeral in the main chapel at Maryknoll, New York.

Sad day….

This is my 1984 IBM clicker keyboard that has been going strong for 35 years. But today it suddenly stopped lighting up! O sorrow! This is one of the real things, not one of the six-ounce plastic jobbies that come with desktops today. It weighs about six pounds and in its day, this clicker was worth $600. I’m hoping I can find some repair geek around here to take a look at it. I’m suspecting the problem is in the cable.

Hong Kong, too…

Our Asia superior in Hong Kong reported today that John Clancey was arrested under Hong Kong’s new draconian state security laws. John was a Maryknoll priest in Hong Kong right before I came. He left Maryknoll but stayed on in Hong Kong as a lawyer working for civil and human rights. He must have been doing good work to get Beijing riled up. Hang in there, John!

This is the way the BBC reported his arrest.

New Cabinets for a New Year

A big problem in the tropics is termites and we had them big time in our kitchen cabinets and in the door frame to the right of the man standing on the left above. Finally the landlord decided to tear out the old cabinets which was great except for three days of thick dust when they also jackhammered off the wall tiles.
We had no cabinets for almost three weeks and then suddenly on New Year’s Eve a work crew shows up and installs the cabinets above. That’s a simple sentence but the work wasn’t. The top photo shows them making the cabinets on the kitchen floor–more dust!—and the bottom photos shows them on New Year’s Day after they finished sanding and staining them. Now maybe we can get back to normal in the kitchen.

Enough already!

COVID-19 has affected people all over the world and in many different ways. Last week I had a funeral in Phnom Penh and afterwards met a young couple, the man from the United States and the woman from Malaysia. They were married in March and came to Cambodia for a honeymoon–and are still here. Because of travel restrictions due to the pandemic, he cannot go to Malaysia and she cannot go to the United States. Seven months now….how long is too long?

Seminary Reunion

2020 is the 50th anniversary of my class’s ordination to the priesthood and I was looking forward to seeing the guys again at the alumni reunion in Baltimore last week. But thanks to COVID-19, such was not to be. Instead a bunch of us got together for a Zoom reunion online, and it turned out to be an interesting and enjoyable experience.

Closing down

Olga, one of our lay missioners, has had to stay in the Philippines because of COVID-19 and death in her family. She will not be able to return to Cambodia so today a crew of Maryknollers emptied out her apartment. Sisters Regina (the organizer), Ann, and Helene were there along with our office manager Siphal and his wife and also lay missioner Julie Lawler and Charlie Dittmeier. Note the common Cambodian space-saving maneuver on the stairway: dividing a normal stairway into half sideways. Broad shouldered people beware.