| The Catholic Church in Cambodia has about 20,000 members--it was devastated by the Khmer Rouge--and of those, approximately 3/4 are Vietnamese people who live in villages--or on boats--along the Mekong River. The Vietnamese in Cambodia have had a difficult place in Cambodia's history, and since the Khmer Rouge era have been the object of a lot of discrimination. Even within the church they have been somewhat isolated because of the desire to rebuild the church within Cambodia according to a Khmer model and image. The Maryknoll priests, because we are not assigned to parishes, have traditionally celebrated mass with the Vietnamese communities up and down the river. Today there was a ground-breaking ceremony for a Vietnamese community 15 miles south of Phnom Penh, and Charlie Dittmeier participated to represent the English-speaking Catholic community which has contributed money to this village church to held them erect a new building. |
| The present church in the little Vietnamese village which consists of just this one street. The parish community is about 40 persons. |
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| Susan Sporl (middle) brought along her nieces KK--with husband Aaron--and Suzanne, and Lindsay Doucette, our newest Maryknoll Lay Missioner also sought out this new experience. KK and Aaron and Suzanne are visiting from the United States. |
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| Lieke Coenegrachts (right) is well-known in the village because of her work in establishing a pre-school there. Juana Encalada (left) and another parishioner helped to fill up the Maryknoll truck for this Sunday morning trip. |
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| A Vietnamese sister and the parish staff had planned everything and the ceremony generally went off without any problems. |
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| Fr. Charlie Dittmeier and Fr. Peter Le Van Tinh presided at the mass and ceremony. There is no resident priest in the village but Fr. Peter comes regularly. |
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| Fr. Peter laid a symbolic first brick in a special place in the center of the area used for the celebration today. The community has enough money for the foundation of the church and they will start on that after the Lunar New Year. |
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| There are many, many children and youth in the parish, and they must have practiced their songs and dances for weeks before today. They seemed to really enjoy their performances. |
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| Susan and Suzanne walked along the road beside the Mekong River as we began our trip back to Phnom Penh. |
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