Kindermissionswerk, Aachen, Germany, in collaboration with the Missionary Community of Saint Paul the Apostle (MCSPA) in Malawi, organized a two-week training in project management concept in order to equip members of various religious and non-religious organizations with essential skills required in project development, implementation and reporting.

Development projects are a necessity in uplifting the lives of the most deprived and marginalized. In this regard, Kindermissionwerk and the MCSPA deemed it an imperative to train various members of religious and non-religious communities who are engaged in different development projects.

The training was convened at Nkhotakota Safari Lodge, situated along Lake Malawi. The breeze from the lake and the tranquility of the site provided an ideal condition for the training. Fr. Manuel Hernandez of the MCSPA facilitated the training. His proficiency and wide experience in running projects were put at the disposal of everyone. Among those who attended the training were members of the Missionary Community of Saint Paul the Apostle, the Society of Montfort Missionaries, priests from the dioceses of Lilongwe and Karonga, Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Sisters of the Holy Family of Bordeaux, Carmelite Sisters and a representative of Tikondane Organization. These are people running various projects in Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Zimbabwe and Malawi irrespectively. The training was divided into two phases of one week each. The first phase was conducted in December 2019 and the second phase in April 2021.

Speaking after the training, Fr. Bernard Maganga said, “This training has helped me know what matters most in writing a project, implementing and giving a reporting. The sessions have been very informative and inspiring. I am very grateful to Kindermissionswerk and the MCSPA in Malawi for considering Montfort Missionaries in this training. What I have learned about project management shall be of immense benefit to the whole Montfortian family and the people of God at large. Zikomo Kwambiri!!” In addition, Fr. Angel Valdivia said that the training will help in preparing sound projects, matching with the requirements of various donors.

Lastly, the training ended with a beautiful ceremony in which every participant was awarded with a certificate of participation.

By Innocent Letasi Phiri.

The Valencian Communication Agency Alberto Pla premiered on April 15th the documentary “I want to be like Genet” for the Valencian NGO Moss Solidaria and the Missionary Community of St. Paul the Apostle in Ethiopia.

The project of this documentary arose after many conversations in Ethiopia about the strength of Ethiopian women in the face of adversity. What today would be called their resilience.

In this documentary, Genet, a 22-year-old girl, tells her story of overcoming adversity and her vision of how some of us can bring out the best in others.
Mari Olcina, from the NGO Moss Solidaria, and Lourdes Larruy, from the Missionary Community of St. Paul the Apostle, present the activities carried out by MCSPA in the region of Muketuri, on the Ethiopian high plateau, together with the women who are at the forefront of each activity:

Enat, in charge of the educational classroom for children with disabilities and responsible for the program of care for children with malnutrition; Friwot, preschool teacher at the San José Mother and Child Centre; Yitayish, a former student at the “Maite Iglesias” students’ residence and Deribe, responsible for one of the children’s canteens in the area.

All of them women full of strength and with a great sense of solidarity, who, over the years, have grown and have become references of hope and strength for everyone.

Many volunteers, visitors and supporters have been moved by watching this documentary, recognizing familiar faces, and seeing the evolution of the projects in the 13 years since the MCSPA began its presence in Muketuri. 3,000 views in just one week of the documentary being available.

We hope that this documentary will contribute to the culture of solidarity proposed by Pope Francis in “Frattelli Tutti”, to put us in the place of those who have been born in a part of the planet where survival is a daily struggle.

We would like to thank all the people who have collaborated with their intellectual and economic means, volunteers from Spain, Chile, Mexico, and so many people from numerous places who have us in their prayers.

Lourdes Larruy, MCSPA.

The documentary is available at the following link: https://youtu.be/MPHNO9z8m9c

As every year at this time in the mission of Nariokotome in the north of Kenya, next to Lake Turkana, we usually pick different fruits, sometimes dates, sometimes custard apples, sometimes papayas or grapes and now it has been the time for oranges.

 They are not oranges of great quality but the children of this area, being the only oranges they have ever tasted in their lives, consider them to be the best in the world.

 We usually pick around 300 kg and apart from making a little marmalade to keep for the year, we give the rest to the schools so that they can taste the oranges that their parents or grandparents helped us plant 25 years ago.

Fr. Antonio Aguirre

Nariokotome Mission

Dear friends,

Yesterday, on the Feast of St Andrew the Apostle, our friends and contacts at San Miguel Island are distributing canned food to the 900 families on the eastern part of this island off the eastern coast of Luzon. This was happening even as we were writing this update.

After being battered by typhoons Rolly and Ulysses, help is only still trickling in as the people on the island slowly rebuild their lives.

We provided rice a week ago as an emergency Phase 1 step, and now we organised with the local leaders for Phase 2: the provision of canned foodstuff for all the 900 families. We thought it was going to be logistically difficult but thanks to the responsible leaders and good cooperation from volunteers from the community, the foodstuff was purchased in bulk in Tabaco City and shipped over to San Miguel.

There were volunteers from among the families who spent the weekend packing the food bags for distribution.

And nearer to Metro Manila, we continued to distribute food bags last week to families of Marikina City which was badly flooded by Typhoon Ulysses.

In addition, every alternate Sunday, for the past 5 months, we have been giving out cooked meals for 70 children at Ronas Garden near our Formation House. However, this December, we will make it every Sunday instead, thanks to persons of goodwill!

So on this significant feast of the Apostle who brought his brother Peter to meet Jesus, the Missionary Community of St. Paul the Apostle would like to thank you for your part in making possible this encounter between those in need and God’s mercy and love.

Fr. Francis Teo MCSPA

Even though this is now a dry season and despite the set back due to Covid-19, this weekend has been a blessing!

Yesterday we celebrated 16 weddings in Chikowa and it was full of pomp and joy.

Today at Mthasewe we have celebrated 11 baptisms and confirmations. The gospel reading couldn’t have been more appropriate on the invitation to the Kingdom of God as a wedding feast. A kingdom that is open to everyone and a Kindgom where God does not tire in inviting us, to a point of going out of the roadsides to get the good and the bad alike. The newly baptised were all dressed in white, a sign that they have their wedding garment on. May we continue to transmit joy of the feast by purifying our hearts especially on this time of Covid-19 through acceptance of others and generosity.

May you have a blessed week ahead

Fr. Steven Ochieng MCSPA

Today, we celebrated the solemnity of Corpus Christi at our Mission in Nariokotome. Due to the ongoing public gathering restrictions because of the pandemic, only a small group of our members, young men and women associated with MCSPA and some of our workers attended the Mass.

After the Mass we had a procession to four different homes within the mission taking Christ to them. It has been almost three months that most of our parishioners have not been able to receive Christ. The families that we went to were delighted to have the Blessed Sacrament reach their homes and were very reverential during the benedictions.

May the body and blood of Christ keep us united and in peace.

Fr. Denis Odongo
(MCSPA)

The situation that the whole world is going through right now can bring the best or the worst out of each one of us. It all depends on the path that we take.

It’s almost two weeks since we attended the last celebration of the mass at El Paraíso, the neighbourhood where the Missionary Community of Saint Paul the Apostle has been working for over three years at the request of the Bishop of Xochimilco, Rt. Rev. Andrés Vargas. El Paraíso lies inside a cultivated area called Chinampas in the district of Xochimilco. Since the contagion rate has apparently been slower here, Mexicans are still carrying on with their normal lives. Some of the families that live in El Paraíso told us that there is no way that they can stop going out of their homes to work because they would not be able to get their basic necessities. Most of them are street peddlers who cannot stay home and have to go out into the streets because “there is no other way”.

How can you ask a population that lives from hand-to-mouth to stay indoors? How can you ask them to wear a mask when there are none left although the government says that there is no scarcity?

Being aware of this latent need and with the support of Bishop Andrés and Caritas Diocesana from the Xochimilco Diocese, we have started a campaign to help those in need. We are giving to each family of the poorest communities in the cultivation area of Xochimilco, food and cleaning products that could last for a month.

We have been able to do this with 70 families thanks to donations from many friends and acquaintances. The beneficiaries were very thankful for the help since many of them did not have any more food to eat. It is important to understand that a lot of these families survive on temporary jobs: cleaning houses, selling things in the streets etc. and many of them have family members with chronic diseases or who are disabled in various ways.

We have seen that donors have answered with a great amount of generosity, sharing what they have even if they do not know how long this whole situation may last, and letting faith guide their actions with the hope that there will be enough for everybody. Pope Francis said that “we are all in the same boat”. We can honestly say that, now more than ever, this quote make so much sense: what affects one person affects all of us.

This Holy Week will be about us all walking alongside a suffering Christ, recognizing that our humanity is what brings us together, rather than our place of origin. It is our time to decide whether we want to come together, making sure that everybody has what is necessary to stay home and safe, or if we wish to be carried away by fear, protecting only what is ours because the world outside apparently does not affect us.

We will keep trying to provide more and more families with food, gloves, mouth covers and workshops to prevent the spread of the virus. It is our mission to be able to say “stay home and leave only for the essentials, with a face mask and gloves” but for that, we are in need of generous hearts.

In Ethiopia, many millions of people eke out a living for the bare necessities of life. They do this by harvesting their fields, looking after their herds, selling their products, doing some work for which they are paid on a daily basis.

The possibility of staying at home and surviving on what one has in storage simply does not exist for most people. Firstly, it is because there is not much to store, and added to that are the tiny spaces that make up their homes, which are clearly unsuitable for storing anything. In addition, the requirement of confinement is a near impossibility because many homes comprise of just one room or, at most, two tiny spaces separated by a wall!

Yesterday, we went to the market at Muketuri, the village where we live in the Ethiopian Highlands. It is a traditional market where little grain, fruit and vegetables are sold and bought; there are also clothes, accessories, household items but not much else. Despite insistent calls from the government for social distancing, the market was very crowded with people buying and selling. Really, what other choice do they have?

If only those who live in the rural areas could have water and vegetable plots where they could grow their own vegetables instead of relying on the trucks that supply the area which sometimes do not arrive. Again, that is not the case either. In many villages, water is still a very scarce commodity or one that can only be obtained by walking long distances. Opening the tap at home and seeing this element coming out is literally a chimera for many people here.

The only thing we can do, therefore, is to continue digging wells and distributing seeds to farmers so that the harvest season is not restricted to just three months per year.

And, above all, we need to REFLECT… so that, when normalcy returns and the imminent danger is over, we can think together about how to avoid the situation where so many human beings lie at the brink between life and death in a permanent and normative way. Maybe we can make that day come so that, when faced with a threat such as the Covid-19, we may all be able to isolate ourselves for a while so as to amortise the damage, and come out, as they say, stronger and not more impoverished, vulnerable or helpless.

The strength and comfort of Faith will be important to continue working for a more equitable world.

Lourdes Larruy, MCSPA.

It has been seven years since Father Paco ( the founder of MCSPA) left us and crossed to the other side of life. Yes, it is seven years ago when we were mourning him! but today the Church in Nariokotome was celebrating life. The church was full, with christians from Nariokotome parish, Todonyang, Kibish. Some Christians came from as far as Lodwar, South Sudan and Ethiopia.

We all danced and sang to celebrate Paco’s life because he brought all of us from different cultures, but all with one common goal: #DoGoodAlways.

Mt 25:35-36: “for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’”

This is what Paco preached and lived.

We are all called to follow the same. Let the legacy that Fr. Paco started in 1987 in Turkana continue becoming a reality. Let’s join hand to provide water, education, food, health and holistic pastoral care to our people, doing all this with LOVE

Lillian Omari – MCSPA

Today we were privileged to have had the visit of Mons. Marvyn Maceda, DD, the Bishop of San Jose de Antique (of the Philippines) at Nariokotome Mission.

Bishop Marvyn has supported the Diocese of Lodwar by sending priests from his diocese to Lodwar as fidei donum (Gift of Faith) priests.

Bishop Marvyn has a missionary vision and says that when one is blessed we must not keep the blessing to ourselves but share it out with others.

At present, there are 3 sisters from the filipino congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Lord’s Table working at Kaaleng Mission and 4 fidei donum priests: 2 at Kaikor from Bishop Marvyn’s diocese and 2 others from the Archdiocese of Jaro for Kaaleng.

The Missionary Community of St. Paul the Apostle will continue in its efforts to act as bridges between Asia, America and Africa, to bring in different congregations and missionaries to work in the different African dioceses where we are present.

“Go to the whole world and proclaim the Good News to the whole of creation”
[Mark 16:15]

Lillian Omari MCSPA