The Missions: San Francisco and San José

Unless the mission is oriented by charity, that is, unless it springs from a profound act of divine love, it risks being reduced to mere philanthropic and social activity...Consequently, being missionaries means loving God with all one's heart, even to the point, if necessary, of dying for him. - Pope Benedict XVI


i forgot to mention the clergy changes:

fr jack is leaving after 4 years and will be going to st charles in arlington. and, fr christopher murphy will be coming down in a few weeks to study spanish. the turnover is set for 15 september.

other than that we will say goodbye to another group tomorrow and get ready for a busy july.

oh yeah, all day diocesan meeting tomorrow...

sorry i've been awol this last week. the satellite has been super glitchy and we've had from 1 to 3 groups at a time down here, so it's been busy. more to follow in the coming weeks as the school walls have risen and the internet gets fixed!

these 36 manual laborers mixed 200 bags of cement in the street while our big truck made rapid trips to and from the river to bring them water in 250 gallon drums with a portable pump. they then loaded up wheel barrows full and poured it into the footings of the new school. what a process - totally efficient from start to finish. began at 0600 and finished by 1500.

the christendom kids were in a group of 13 working on a house and mixed about 10 bags in the same time, using buckets to pour the cement into plywood molds for the walls...

the electricity is on!! temporaily, to be sure, but currently we have current.

we have also adopted a sickly looking puppy who showed up the other day - i named him barnabé after the saint of the day. he's getting along well with the 4 chickens, 2 turkeys, and 1 goat who call the backyard their home.

here is a nice picture of the christendom students who are down learning spanish and helping out for 6 weeks. notice the homade roller - it actually worked better than the pre-fab kind, since the stick distributes the pressure evenly on the roller. something to think about for anyone who's looking to make a million on an invention...

make that 360 million in arrears...

7 days and counting and still no electricity. from what i understand, the government and/or private company that provides power to the country has run out of money and is 30 million in debt. therefore, they continue to produce electricity for about 10 minutes a day. so, what we have now is a ountry without power because there isn't any money, but no one can make any money because they don't have any power to run a refrigerator, an air pump, a set of hair clippers...it's an awfully viscious circle...

sure:




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