New church

A note to Father Michael Barton sent May 2022: Hi father, we hope you are fine as well as we are. The aim of this message, is to certify you that we have started our school teaching seccessfuly on date 05.05.2022. with two classes 1 and 2. therefore we need to share this information with you as a one family of ascension of the lord Catholic Church Ayod County. Best regards. By: James Khor Panyuan. Head Teacher of Comboni school.

News from Father Michael Barton

SS-Mogok

P.O. Box 21102
Nairobi, Kenya. 00505
February 26th,2020

Dear Friends,

This year the school did very well and particularly the class eight leavers. They sat for it in another place outside of Mogok in the last week of November 2019 and the results have just come out. The highest got 392 marks out of 500 and the lowest got 380/500 in five subjects and so once again it is clear that hard work pays off. Pastoral work has been less successful. As it seems only in Mogok are things moving in the right direction because I am here and keep pushing but in the other chapels things are stagnant and it is very hard to get any response at all. I keep the school going along with fine teachers of both the morning and evening school and catechism is being taught only in the center and nowhere else. When I go out I sometimes think that a neutron bomb might be needed to get something running.
I give you an example, on January 7th 2020 I went with two catechists and three young men to go from Mojok to Paguil where I had never been before. That day we walked the entire day near the Jongalei Canal and when it grew dark we stopped and lay down in the open field. I had forgotten to bring my mosquito net and so my head got gnawed on by the pesky insects all night long. The other sleepers had even less covering and so were completely unprotected. On the 8th we rose with the sun and walked till we got to a village at half past six in the evening and there we met the old catechist of Paguil one, who after I begged him lent me a net to sleep under and inside a hut. We prayed the rosary but only us knew the prayers which is always a bad sign. We were up early and I insisted that we say Mass before a third day of walking. Then as we drew near to Paguil some of our school boys from there met us and told me three things. 1] There is bread hot and fresh and I WAS so happy. 2] There is the internet and so in an NGO there I could load and download messages and likewise this make me so happy. 3] We had to go to not Paguil but Paguil one which is another half day walk. We arrived to find the flour was finished and the internet was down. Yet Friday morning I got on AOL and got messages and news and in the afternoon walked in the hot sun we walked to Paguil one with Peter, the old catechist beating the drum as we walked and driving me crazy.
Now it was Saturday and they tell me the chapel was brand new and was just a couple of hours away just ahead. So on Sunday we got there and had confessions and Mass and blessed and named the chapel [Saint Joseph] and baptized ONE girl. They fed us and we rested and started the first eight hours of walking back. All for one girl to be baptized and the same story walking back but when we got back in Mogok late Tuesday evening a woman had killed a goat and made us tea and was so kind to have us return. Yes, I was a bit put off with such a effort and such little result but the kind MARTHA make it seem worthwhile.
I stayed in Mogok till Saturday as a man asked me to have a funeral Mass on Friday for his sister. It turned out she was a young mother of three small children and with a very elderly husband. She and her three children were just baptized on Christmas day 2018 while I was recovering in the USA from surgery. That Saturday we started south for Wai and walked the entire day and a good part of the evening till as we neared the place, very near our goal but I quit and decided to stay in the forest rather than walk another step. This forced the catechists to stay with me there and some people brought them food from the village. I had slept poorly and so early on Sunday morning “as the women were going to the tomb” I entered Wai , our destination. They led me to a very dirty compound but prepared a hut and a mattress on the ground and asleep I went.
In the evening as we were going to celebrate Mass when I was told the hosts were left behind in Mogok. So we read the readings and prayed and the young teacher walked all the way back to get them so we could have Mass on Monday. Now in Wai there were no baptisms as the woman who did want her children christened did not know even the Our Father. So we were there but not much happened but we went on to Gorwai and were met with a lot of people and I spent one day blessing homes with the Legion of Mary and every day with Mass one day for reconciliation and another for the anointing of the sick and another with the youth and still there is no catechist there either and so on Sunday there was only two baptisms but those mothers knew something.
From there I took a young girl and a young teacher to enroll in a senior secondary school in Rumbek. I had two girls before Sarah there but this was my first young man and he had helped me by finishing class 8 and spending two more years teaching in Mogok.
Now I am in Nairobi and had a week stay in the Nairobi Hospital and another week at Muangaza Jesuit Retreat Centre for Spirituality. Now I have someone making bricks and preparing to build a chapel in Mogok and I found today a Ruanda carver in Nairobi, who sold me two crucifixes one small for the altar and a big one for the back wall of the new chapel and I ordered two statues one of the Holy Family which is almost done and another of Saint Bishop Daniel Comboni which needs to be started. Soon I shall return to Juba and then to Mogok.
Good Lent to one and all and many thanks for your prayers, cards and donations.
We have been given a new bishop in Malakal and he has brought two young priests to the Lou area of the Nuer where I used to serve and was the most hopeful part of the parish and now just the deadest part remains. Let’s bring some life to it.

In the Lord’s Sacred Heart,
Michael D. Barton, MCCJ

From Nyamlell to Mogok

Father Michael D. Barton
Comboni Missionary
Mogok
Jonglei State
South Sudan

I left Nyamlell after eleven years and a bit more of wonderful work among the Dinka Malual and went home to the USA. The day I left Nyamlell was the day that Pope Benedict XVI announced that he would resign the papacy (February 2013) and I only heard about it when I reached Wau.

When I returned to the South Sudan in December 2013, the civil war had just broken out and I was looking at the only region of the South Sudan that I had not experienced — the Upper Nile Region, which was the area most affected by the civil war between the SPLA and SPLA-IO. Father Antonio Labracca was living in Ayod as a hermit and was open to my coming with him as one who would do missionary ministry in the area of the Nuer Gawar and Nuer Lou.

So, I was sent to Leer in Unity State to study the Nuer Language with a group of other Comboni Missionaries. We had one day of class. Then the civil war reached Leer and the looting soon began. The other missionaries fled the town too and I refused to join them so I saw the looting of the Catholic Mission of Leer. Two officials of an oil company working in that state helped me to find a boat on the White Nile to take me to Old Fangak, where the Combonis run another mission among the Nuer. I was welcomed by that community and stayed two months to study. For holy week 2014, I make the jump to my new assignment in Ayod and was there on Palm Sunday where they used a donkey in the procession and to welcome me into their community.

I was sent to Mogok to celebrate the rest of the Holy Week, where I saw a school building and a small Catholic community. On Easter Monday I went back to Ayod and as we got nearer I felt blisters on my feet after nine hours of walking. I also heard heavy gun fire coming from Ayod. I found Antonio well and we stayed in Ayod until Easter Friday when we were told to flee and that we did. One night it was deep in the bush and the next day it was even deeper and there we stayed for a month and a half with the hope that the government would leave Ayod and we could go back. That has yet to happen and we are in 2018.

That place was called Jony and we drank and washed in the same water all very brown and very much a village rural setting. No blackboard or books or even chalk. The catechists and youth had gone back to the town and brought out most of the clothes I had left there. I asked Antonio to allow me back to Mogok and I would start a school there and do pastoral work from there. So, I did.

With permission of the authorities of the place we started with a few textbooks and no chalk or food for me. Within two months Father Antonio had joined me, continuing his ministry as a prayerful hermit now both of us in Mogok. We had received chalk and food and the Mogok Christians built us two huts, a bigger one for Antonio and a smaller one for me — all for a new rain jacket.

I started the school with class 1 to class 5. No fees and not much interest from the local population and terrible absenteeism. To begin is tough. I found a few other teachers but to align them to my way of doing things was also difficult. Every year since has been easier and the pupils and parents have taken the school more seriously and the teacher more and more on board with what I want. At the end of 2017 we had the full primary school. The class eight has 5 candidates for the leaver certificate and they took the first three positions. The first position was one of our girls and second was one of our boys and third place was a tie between two boys and another girl all from our school. After starting from nothing in 2014, by 2018 we had something of value. Those two girls I sent to a senior secondary school in Rumbek run by the Irish Loreto Sisters. I have had good experiences with other girls in the past. Girls are terribly oppressed in Nuerland as in many other places and so I feel called to help them and let the boys figure other solutions with their families.

It was a real challenge to start and get going the catechumenate, and after four years it really is working only in Mogok but nowhere else in the parish. The vision I have is to create one parish with all the Nuer that I work with so we would be independent from Old Fangak. But so far it is only my vision and that of some of the West side of the parish and nobody else. Yet it continues in my head. I would like to see some permanent churches built and lots of instructions given and on-going growth going non-stop. We are just at the beginning and the Presbyterians are much more established.

The West part of the parish is part of the Sudd, a very large water containment, and are the Gawar, whereas the East is wet in the Wet Season (summer) and very dry in the dry (winter).

I move only on foot and have no car, or even bike or motorbike. I would be able to use a car if and when we go back to Ayod. Not now as it would be taken either by the government troops or the rebels among who we live. In the future . . .

In March 2017 many towns and villages were disrupted by government troops and looted by everyone. I had guns put to my head and Mogok was captured for just a few hours, but all my things were looted and carried off and up to June 2018, I had only one pair of long pants and three shirts. Now after a month home in Indianapolis I have more clothes than I had before the looting and I have bought nothing.


F

Photos from Mogok, South Sudan

These are photos taken of the Mogok Christians and Comboni Missionaries Father Michael Barton and Father Antonio Labracca.

Message from Father Michael, Ascension Parish

Comboni Missonaries Ascension Parish January 17, 2016 Dear Family and friends, I am in a place called Yuai where CRS is present and they let me use the computer and internet. So I can greet you after a long while of only prayerful daily contact and I do mean daily. In January I was in this area for the first time and visited all the three counties of the Nuer Lou that are under Ayod parish and had a lot of pastoral work masses, baptisms and church marriages and days and days of walking. In mid February, I went out of South Sudan to visit some other African countries only to clear my head from a tough year. By mid March I was back here and visited most places again by myself with a small entourage and had Easter here and even visited some chapels that I had not been before. Then that same group led me back to Magok, which I had left on the 31 of Dec 2014. After two days of rest I was back in the bush with Gawar Nuer to visit new chapels there in Halt and Minime, which is one huge river surrounded with big swamps and water and flies and mosquitoes. We are just starting in that area and so I only Baptized five souls in those three weeks there. One old catechist volunteered to move there and so the future should get better. Two things that really impressed me were hundreds of dead cows in many villages everywhere dead cows. The other, was in one hut a huge python came out from under the bed and scared me to death, but when I yelled it went back under the bed and I could not get anyone else excited about it. No big deal for everyone else but for me a really big deal. The rebel government gave me again permission to use the government school in Mogok and so my group led me back again to Mogok and we started up the new school year from May 10 or so to December 31, 2015. We had three terms with no breaks but weekends. The first and second terms were 11 weeks and the third term was 12 weeks and all with their exams. 2015 was so much better than 2014 with good attendance and good enrollment and no outside interference and a bit more support of the parents. The teachers were good and so were the children. I started a Sunday school for catechism and we had first communions and Baptisms on Comboni Day. After school I start to pump and fetch and carry our own water and wash my own clothes on some Saturdays. I learned to make pudding on big days using our neighbors' fire and firewood and they would help with the hot pans even when I would go to make popcorn. On June 27 we celebrated with a big celebration of Father ANTONIO (1965 to 2015) and killed a big bull and Mass and a wedding and plays and games and speeches. Father feels a call to complete prayer and meditation as a special type of hermit and is loved by EVERYONE. Rains were much less than the previous year but I still had lots of mud to cross going and coming from school. On one Saturday I was over making popcorn and Maria Nyapal was aiding me, when I heard her wonderful mother Roda yelling in a very nearby hut. And I asked Maria what it was. Oh, it is Roda. She was giving birth to her seventh child and there were lots of people in the compound and I was popping corn and the small children were all looking in the door and their fathers were calling them away but mystery was stronger than obedience. Martha the Aunt of Maria came out laughing and I asked was the baby like her or like me, and Martha said it was like her. You know that they named that girl Nyaabuna or daughter of the FATHER because of my presence at the time of birth. Father Antonio now always kids Roda that after the seventh time she still cries like a hyena. He had heard all about it from me. Comboni Day was another big day and every day is full of seven teaching periods and correcting and grading and recording and then selling pens and exercise books and praying and reading and resting. We have no desks and so the teachers have to bring their own chairs as do some of the pupils and the rest sit on the floor and they have to find their own textbooks since we have none in the school. Yet it so happened that before the war started a lorry broke down and was loaded with text books but are all in the hands of villagers. Yet two years we got through. It was on the 17th that I started again to move. I did try to move in June but mud and water stopped me and I went to one place and cancelled the rest. Yet now it is dry and on the 15 of December our provincial came and lots of mail and many packets of magazines and so now I am up to date on the current events of a few months ago. Then on the Dec 8th we opened the Holy Year by making a door and going through it on our knees and singing mercy on your people, Lord. Then the evening we did it all again for and with the parish and from the 18th we are doing in the chapels. I was back for the exams and certificates and gave the certificates out on the 3rd of Jan and Lou people came to escort me to their area and this is what I am doing. But first all of the upper classes passed well and only in class ones and two were there failures and only some girls in class one did not make it and no one was pushed ahead everyone had to make on their own. John Tap is the husband of Roda and father of the seven and has been with me in all these visits since I started in late December part time and now full time. He is such good company. As I walk I think of the old Toyota that I had in Nyamlell and I sing to myself to the music of a white Christmas. But the words are: I am dreaming of a white Toyota pickup with four wheel drive, and good tires that will get from here to there. In one chapel, and I have blessed six new chapels all built by the local Christians, and at St. Teresa there were very little girls as alleluia dancers and one would dance her heart out and then look at me with pleading eyes and she was thinking to herself, please do not eat me . . . Little Flower forever. Today we had confessions and the mercy Mass with government people here up to the end and then testing, and so tomorrow we have in the same chapel a Mass, a wedding and 17 baptisms and then on Tuesday a ten hour walk to the next place. Blessing and peace, Michael Barton

Escape from looting in Leer

From an email sent by Father Michael Barton on Feb. 28: I shall try to write something at the end of most months. Last January 31st I was running from the looting of Leer and then was helped to find a boat on the Nile to get to Old Fanjok Mission dedicated to the Holy Trinity where there are three Comboni priest, one Italian, another an Uganda and a German whose mother is a Korean and here they have decided to do all the work of cleaning and cooking and wasking of their clothes. So they walk and use canoes to get to their many chapels. No cars or bikes here. I am mostly given over to the study of Nuer and at this age will do what I can do.. I hope to get to Ayod by early April and in this month I will study and also teach in the catechist course in the month of March. Michael