St. Brigid Roman Catholic Church
Journal Entry - November 19, 2002
We've got less than 3 weeks left of our time in Rome! Time is certainly flying. We leave on December 7 and we are all looking forward to the mission. The energy level is definitely increasing.
My language studies are going pretty well, but I'll have to get back to you once I'm in Malawi and have had a real test. I was surprised to learn that their counting system is based on 5, so 7 is said as 5+2. Remember how Chichewa has 8 dfferent "classes" of nouns (like German has masculine, feminine, and neuter "der, die, and das" which get treated differently in the grammar.) Along with the difference in each class for singular and plural, there are different pronouns for each class. The 6 different types fo pronouns (1st, 2nd, 3rd person, singular and plural) are all tied to the different noun classes, so there are 96 different personal pronounds to learn as well as 8 X 2 cases for THIS, THAT, IT, and ALL. It's all part of the learning and the adventure. Building the vocabulary of nouns and verbs is the biggest part.
Living in community is good, difficult, and interesting. We are all comfortable with each other by now and we have learned more about how each other works. This makes many things run more smoothly and also makes the manners wear thin in other areas. Thre is just so much to learn about how I feel about things, why I feel that way, and whether I need to accept the situation or try to change it. The prayer for "the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and should, and the wisdom to know the difference" says it all.
Team Malawi consists of Jenny, 22, from Wisconsin, just graduated from UW-Madison in Journalism; Lisa, 26, from DC, is an editor, graduated from American University, and Justyna, 25 from Poland has a degree in Special Education. We learned some more about what we will be doing when the Provincial Sister of Eastern Afrcia came and spoke to us about the plan in Balaka. A social analysis was done in 2000 to identify the problems that the society is facing, indentify some causes and interactions, and then they developed some plans to address the causes of the problems. We are going to be working with some accredited correspondence courses from London that will result in certification that will help the students get jobs.
There is an interesting story of providence with the land in Malawi... the Canossians had bought about 5 acres of land for the school, but when the mother superior of the convent was transferred, the city sold the land to squatters without telling the sisters and they lost their rites to the land. "Well, she left, so we didn't think that she wanted the land any more." In contesting the situation to the government, presenting their plans and their vision, the government gave them almost 30 acres of land to develop and work! It's pretty exciting. The main part of the development is a big activity hall which is intended to be a focal point for lots of different classes and activiities...like hoops, frisbee, and soccer! ; )
We studied and gave presentations on the popes' encyclicals on mission. This was really interesting reading and it covered the fundamental reasons and call to mission, barriers, and some really good insights into what we are doing. It's more than trying to meet the temporal, physical needs that will always be there--it's about giving them home for something better and human dignitiy. You can find them on www.vatican.ve if you're interested.
We went to Northern Italy and to Sicily to talk with some high schoolers and young adults about going on mission. It was fun because they were very interested in what we are going to be doing and how we arrived at this decision. We got to see the beautiful country of Italy. I was driving one of the cars, so I got to participate in the crazy driving through Rome and the other cities. We went to the place where St. Magdalene of Canossia founded the Canossian Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Poor. We saw some of her relics on display there. In Sicily we went up Mt. Etna on a Saturday afternoon and then awoke on Sunday morning to an awesome sunrise with volcano Etna erupting. The eruptions grew stronger over the next day or so and the whole city was covered in ash and the windows were rattling from the explosions which were over 10 miles away. You could hear the ash falling on the leaves of the trees. We were walking around with umbrellas to keep the ash off of us. There was more than 1/2" of ash when we left and cleanup was pretty similar as that for snow. We were 5 hours into our trip home when a big earthquake hit Sicily- no significant damage from this one. (However, there was a seperate one close to Rome a couple of days later that killed about 30 kids when the roof of their school fell in on them.) We missed 2 major geological events by a very small amount of time.
We received a Missionary Mandate from the Cardinal Ruini, the cardinal of Rome, along with 14 other missionaries. It was standing room only in St. John's cathedral on a Friday night. He gave us a missionary cross and a copy of the Gospels. Our sponsors recieved olive trees for them to plant in their home parishes as a reminder to pray for us while we are on our mission. It was a really cool experience.
There have been 3 people from San Diego (1 more on the way) to pass through Rome on vacations and it was really good to see them. It's good to talk with them about what it's like here, because it is exciting, new, and invigorating to tell people about it.
I hope that you're doing well. Drop me a line with your news when you get a chance. Peace!
