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Fr. Allan,
As you know, it is little bit difficult now to communicate with you, but as I told you as long as possible I can, I will try to contact you. I think this is one of those precious moments in which I can tell you something about my mission. In these days, I’m in Makeni because we have our annual assembly. The theme of the assembly is EVANGELIZATION. So I take this opportunity to write to you and send my best Christmas wishes. Of course, through you I will reach all the parishioners and be united with them. I renew my gratitude for all that they are doing for me and my mission. I wish each of them and personally MERRY CHRISTMAS. May Almighty God bless them and give them a long life and good health.
About my self, little by little I’m settling in and knowing the area. Everyday, I’m out trying visiting the communities. As you know it is a big challenge for me. First of all, I thought that my stay in Makeni would help me adapt to the weather, but on the contrary, I’m suffering little bit with this change.
Secondly, the style of doing mission is very different from the city. Every evening, I have to meet catechumens for catechism lesson; to meet people. As I wrote to you in my last email, you see the people here only in the evening from 7pm. Evening means darkness. Here from 6pm is very dark. Nice thing is that you can enjoy yourself looking the stars in the sky. Any way, I have to use the candle for reading and I have to confess that I still have problem in recognising people. When I arrive in the village it is already dark with the candle I can not see them properly and identify them. Imagine I have problem of reading with the candle, how I will be able to identify them.
Other difficulty is, at the moment we cannot rely on the community leaders, because they are not able to teach the catechism. How many times we have problem in finding people for the readings. We need to spend more for the formation of the pastoral agents. Speaking about the community leaders, we have even a problem in finding a leader who is married in the church. Some have two wives but they are doing quiet well. If you remove him from the community, first it is difficult to find another who can replace him; secondly if you put someone who is married and the people don’t like him, the people will not come to church any more. I’m talking about the outstations. For this reason, most of our community leaders are young and students of the secondary school. You can imagine the difficult and challenges we are facing here. For me, it is properly the first announcement, even though the Parish has already twenty years since its opening. I’m not criticising my confreres, but they should work more. They opened the mission with a lot of outstations, that is good but they didn’t go around visiting them. Now when I go to say Mass, I have to teach people how to respond. It is true that I have to be patient.
But we also have some satisfactions in pastoral work. You can’t imagine the joy expressed by our Christians when you arrive for the mass or visit. Your presence is very important. It raises their hope. When I arrive if I have a chance I put some music for them. Do you know which tape I use for the music? I use car radio and they enjoy. Here just a little thing can make people happy. Thanks be to God we have people who don’t need a lot of things for enjoyment.
Another thing I have to tell you is this. In Africa in particularly in Sierra Leone, the hope of Christianity is the youth. Islam here means old people. In our communities, we have more youth and children. This makes me happy in seeing the youth in the church. We need to do more in helping these young people. We do our best with what you send to us. The main target is to pay school fees for them, because we believe that later on we will have pastoral agents worthy of this name. (Please see the new photo of Mass in Kukuna, St Mary’s Hall)
By the way, I am in charge of a new area where we have to build the church. This area is very difficult to evangelise. It is an area dominated by Islam. Now we use our secondary school for that purpose. I have to work more. Two weeks ago, I went to see the paramount chief of that town. He was very happy to welcome me and talked nicely about Catholic Church. He told me that even though they cannot change their religion because they are too old, there is chance of conversion for their children and grand children.
Now to attract the youth, I’m trying to form a team that we call CELTIC- KUKUNA. Kukuna is the name of that town situated near GUINEA. I will try to look for Celtic shirts and shorts for my team. Who knows maybe from St. Jude’s someone can connect me to Celtic team. Of course, it is a dream that could be realty someday.
With all my gratitude, I send to all my warm wishes for Christmas and New Year.
In Christ, Paulin sx
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