DMC STUDENTS SING AT PRESTON...

4th September 2008 - The Preston SVD team and Dorish Maru College admin held today a brotherly conversation at the presbytery. Present were (Preston-side): Bill Burt, Thien Nguyen, Linh Nguyen; (DMC-side): Henry Adler, Michael Nguyen, Boni Buahendri and Dom Flores. (See photo).

During the dialogue, the parish formally invited the DMC students (through their formators) to involve themselves in the music ministry of the parish. The invitation was well received by all. It was also rightly perceived as the opening for deeper involvement in other ministries, like liturgy, pastoral and youth ministries, etc. The next step then was to present this proposal to the DMC students through their leader, Eddie Lering. Then Eddie, Thien and Linh (committee) will draw up the practicalities. They will resume to sing on the 4th Sunday of September.

We moved on to other matters. Dom and Michael asked if there’s a prospect of doing Bible ministry in the parish. To our joy, we were informed that Thien and Linh had already formed a Bible group and that Dom and Michael would be welcome to lend their expertise on the Bible.

At this juncture, Bill mentioned the hope that one day we would be sharing our SVD charism to the parishioners, i.e. the life and spirituality of St. Arnold, SVD and SSpS.

Dom also pointed out that presently the priest-members of DMC often go for pastoral supply (Masses) to neighboring parishes. But Dom made it very clear that if needed, they would give first priority to the needs of Preston parish under our SVD confreres. Right away Bill asked Thien to make a roster for Mass schedules for SVD confreres.

The group felt that that was enough for the day. So we closed the meeting in a very happy mood. Then we walked to a Yum Cha restaurant for our lunch. On our way, we made a side trip to the parish Day Care for senior citizens, yea, for oldies, not for kiddies. Great idea! ~

Sacred Heart church - a beauty!

JOHN PRIOR WRITES ...

30 August 2008 - Balaton, Hungary, was the site of the 12th Conference of the InternationalAssociation for Mission Studies (IAMS) from August 16-23, with the theme “Human Identity and the Gospel of Reconciliation: Agenda for Mission Studies and Praxis in the 21st Century.”

There were four plenary addresses and responses, six sessions of parallel groups on particular themes with papers and related discussions (90 papers in all distributed among the groups), two regional meetings, several other plenary sessions, a special interest session, daily worship and several social and cultural events.

On Sunday we went to Budapest where the 240 participants worshipped among 50 different congregations, Protestant and Catholic, followed by a tour of the city. On Tuesday, over 250 persons participated in eight different exposure visits around Hungary and even into Slovakia. Thursday evening we had a boat trip on the lake, serenaded by gipsy music.

The real joy and usefulness of the Conference was the conversation and networking with colleagues from such a broad spectrum of international and ecumenical perspectives regarding mission studies and practices today.

The SVD has been intimately associated with IAMS from the beginning. For many years the association's journal, Mission Studies, was edited from Sankt Agustin, and later by Steve Bevans from Chicago. We have had at least a dozen SVD participants at previous Conferences. This time just eight confreres took part.

It was good to see Steve Bevans so full of life after his major operation (brain tumour), in a “former life” Steve was Dom Flores’ rector in Vigan, northern Philippines; Roger Schoeder was his delightful and insightful self, Roger has taught in YTU as a visiting lecturer; Jon Kirby, who has just made a "paradigm shift" from Tamale, Ghana, to Washington, was as incisive as ever; it was great to meet Augustine Jianghua Li from Beijing, first because he is from mainland China but also because he is not (yet) one of the SVD IAMS "veterans"; Stanis Lazar came although he has now become Provincial of INM, he gave greetings from the recently formed International Association of Catholic Missiologists; Christian Tauchner and Franz Helm from St. Gabriel in neighbouring Austria were gracious "hosts". And Bill Burrows of Orbis Books is still very much part of the "SVD Contingent." As you can see from the photo (right), we got together late one evening for “bible sharing” in the traditional SVD manner.

Three SVD seminarians studying in Budapest, Lawrence Kponor and Sebastian Tengan (Ghana) and Hủgor Sándor (Romania), served as stewards during the conference. Bishop Ladislav Nemet, who had been part of the local committee with Frans Magung, led the final worship. It would be good to see a new generation of SVD Mission scholars attending the next IAMS Conference, due in 2012 (possibly in Toronto, Canada). If SVD participation were to reflect SVD teaching and research, then more confreres from Asia and Africa would take part.

I was coordinator for the BISAM (Bible Studies and Mission) Study Group which had around 30 participants for the six parallel group meetings during the Conference. For its next project (2008-2012) the Study Group will be taking up the theme of "Mission, Nation and Empire: The use of the bible by biblical and mission scholars and by the grassroots and congregations".

After the Conference I spent a few days in our SVD communities in Budapest and Koszeg. Joszef Werner remembers Dom Flores from his Philippine days (back in the last century); Marsel, Modes, Frans and Eli from Indonesia and Sebastian from India are part of the young, vibrant international Hungarian Province, rising like a phoenix from decades first under fascist and then communist rule. ~

John Prior, SVD