Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
The warehouse we are taking over as a worship space for our Saturday night liturgy for the English Catholic Community is almost ready. It’s still got a rough concrete floor, no fans, etc., but we have a “sanctuary” and the old altar we used to use at World Vision and 229 plastic chairs. Tomorrow is the day for our first gathering there.
This is one of the least comfortable ways to get around on a moto during a rainy season trip.
Our first Saturday evening mass at St. Jude Thaddeus School’s multipurpose room is getting close but we’re getting things ready mostly on schedule. Today I took the old altar we used at the World Vision auditorium to the school on top of a tuk-tuk. That’s Sambath, known to three decades of Maryknollers, taking it off the top. While in the hall, I also tested the new sound system and it works. We’re getting there!
What would we do without plastic bags? (Probably we’d have a much cleaner environment!)
Today we were at St. Jude Thaddeus School where we are going to use their multipurpose room for our Saturday evening masses. Today’s goal was to test their sound system, try out our projector, and see how to arrange the chairs. We had planned originally to put the altar on the red platform and project on the wall behind it but the room has permanent skylights and we found the brightest area of the walls is just where we wanted to project. That is not going to work!
Today a group of lay missioners in Phnom Penh visited the seminary to talk with the seminarians who will be priests in three years. Then we had dinner together and then Sambath, Chamroeun, and Ratana did the dishes.
Cambodians, especially the deaf youth, live a simple lifestyle that is closely linked to nature. Today there was excitement in the morning break when the students discovered two small green mangoes on a tree on our property–unfortunately too far out of reach for even our mango-picker poles.
I love mangoes but the idea of eating a hard, unripe green mango is yechy for me. Cambodians put some sort of salt or spices or something on the green mangoes and think it’s heavenly.
Our two wicker cabinets and keyboard and processional cross arrived at St. Jude Thaddeus School after a short one kilometer ride from the DK Meeting Centre.
Myra, the school owner, and two staff move our cabinets into a storage area they created for our church materials.
