Category: Uncategorized

MKLM Anniversary/Friday

The first-floor dining room used to be the seminary library but now it has become a large room for meetings and is a dining room for our group.
Kathy and Flavio from Brazil led a meditative morning prayer in the Asia Room.
Then there was a recognition of the anniversaries of earlier lay mission classes, and those present received a memento.
Our former director and one of the founders of the present Maryknoll Lay Missioners, Sam Stanton, is dying, and we had an unscheduled mass before lunch to pray for him and his family.
Bishop John Stowe, OFM, of Lexington, Kentucky, is the main speaker tomorrow and one of my heroes for his strong stands on issues like working for peace and respecting the LGBT community.
In the evening Marie Dennis spoke on hope in the modern world. Marie is one of the pillars of the American Catholic church for her advocacy on issues of justice and peace. She is currently a director of Pax Christi International.
Many members of the larger Maryknoll community came to Marie’s talk along with all of us there for the anniversary.

DDP Farewell for Charlie

As soon as I arrived at the Deaf Development Programme, the picture taking started with different group. Here are our barber students and their trainer.

Some of the young women from our Education Project who performed traditional Cambodian dance for the first time.

Our house parents

Some of our Education Project and Job Training Project students

Then I had to take the first piece of an hors d’oeuvres-type dish.

Taiwan–Day 2.2

[I’m having lots of problems with my photos on a new iPhone. Life was much easier with an Android!]

The day started off with a bike ride to a market site along a river through Taipei. Judy and her son Dominique were my guides. The bicycles are a city project, effectively used there to reduce the number of miles driven in cars. Our trip, under 30 minutes, was free.

Another community-living service is umbrella rental! If you’re caught in the rain without one, public buildings have these rental racks.

We bicycled to a subway station and left the bikes there, and then took the underground to a volcanic hot springs that is in Taipei. Very interesting. You can see the steam rising from the 44ºC water.

Cleaning me out…

I’m sorry for the lapse in postings over the last five days. I went to BNH Hospital in Bangkok and thought I would have a lot of time to catch up on work but that turned out to be not true. Now I’m out of the hospital and at the Maryknoll office in Bangkok. I return to Phnom Penh tomorrow.

In my check-up x-ray three weeks ago, the doctor spotted something in my lungs that couldn’t be identified. I had no illness or symptoms and he decided to do a bronchoscopy, putting a camera down my throat so he could actually see what was in the lungs. Here a nurse is inserting a port into my arm to be used for blood work, anesthesia, and other procedures.

Finally it was time for the gurney ride to the operating room.
The doctor decided to do the full program so he performed the bronchoscopy with the camera down in my lungs and then took a biopsy while there and then finally washed out my lungs with water to be used to create a culture to determine just what it is they would see. Here I am just after coming out of the recovery room.

Time for a change

On my trip to Kentucky last week, I arranged to get new liturgical books that we can use on Wednesdays for the mass we have with lay missioners in Phnom Penh. Here Kila holds the old, taped-up books, and Maria has the new ones.

Trip to Kentucky–5

On Saturday morning I met a donor who has been very generous in supporting the Deaf Development Programme. We met at this coffee shop near the retirement home where I will be living. The bicycle is my cousin’s electric bike that I am riding while in Louisville.

On Sunday morning I bicycled over to St. Margaret Mary Church where two of my priest friends are ministering.

Like many modern parishes, they had two technicians in the back to control the projection and the sound system.

Trip to Kentucky–4

On the morning of our last day together, Brian Reynolds, the vicar general of the archdiocese, spoke to us about the research and planning for a reorganization of the parishes of the diocese.

Some photos from the beautiful St. Meinrad campus

Trip to Kentucky–Sunday

St. Frances of Rome church is across the street from Nazareth Home Clifton and I went to the 8:30 AM mass. Fr. Jerry Eifler, an old friend, was the presider there. After mass I also met some family of a girl I taught at Angela Merici High School in the 1970s.

This the driveway to Nazareth Home Clifton on Payne Street in Louisville. I will live in the building on the right.

One of the things I like about Kentucky and that I miss in Cambodia are the large hardwood trees and forests. This majestic tree is on the grounds of Nazareth Home.

Actual Coronation Day

Today is the actual 20th anniversary of King Sihomani’s coronation in 2004.

This is the most frequent face of King Sihomani as seen by the Cambodian populace. He is always smiling the same tight-lipped smile. It is almost as if he had plastic surgery and cannot do anything except smile. But smiling is probably his most important responsibility as king. He has no legislative or jurisdictional power but is a symbol of the royal family and in that role he gives a human–smiling–face to an otherwise dour government.