Sunday, November 9, 2008

E-mail from Father Michael, Nov. 5, 2008


St. Teresa Parish

Comboni Missisonaries

Nyamlell (Aweil West)

P.O. Box 21101

Nairobi, Kenya 00505

Nov. 5, 2008


Dear Good People,

We have six and a half weeks left in the 2008 school year and things are picking up nicely with a good school year and we had to overcome many difficulties but the end is in sight and we all have great hope that there will be good results. During the week I am mostly involved in the school, which I enjoy, and then on the weekend I am out in the field of pastoral work in the chapels and in the centers.

This year we have a big flood in the entire parish of all the rivers in the area and so this makes getting around on bicycle next to impossible or at least much more difficult and having to carry the bike instead of it carrying me. However, boat travel is easy but the trouble is one needs a boat. I had two short trips on an NGO boat and am planning my last trip to two chapels this weekend. Another big advantage is there are lots of fish. Wherever there is water there are people who are fishing day and night right on the side of the road. I was out with the car for All Saints and All Souls and almost ran a number of fisher people sleeping along the road even with their mosquito nets. I prayed no one would roll over in the way of the car -- mine or someone else’s -- or a big truck. I went to three chapels and of course had bone filled fish at every meal.

After coming back from Kenya from a ten-day break which ended on September 10th; I found some two workers from the Nuba Mountains who agreed to put the roofs on the Science Lab, and on two more classrooms of the High School . The walls had already been repaired and windows and doors were already in place. Well I told them that I did not have any timber and so we couldn’t do anything. They said they would try to get some. Well, lo and behold, two days right at the end of the school day came a lorry and the two told me that they needed $10,000 to pay for 700 2 x 4’s of mahogany.

I was surprised but was able to find the money and so now that is going on and one building should be finished quite soon. At the end of August Coraid (a Dutch NGO) finished building of four spacious classrooms for the Comboni School in Marial Baai. All very nice and I paid $60,000 to them for it. It is already in use. Then to my shock they told me they had spent $100,000 and wanted the rest from me. Well, I agreed to pay an additional 15% and I had to throw in the boat and another $4,000 to pay off the additional sum; it is now all paid and they are off my back.

Soon after that some other men agreed to make a new metal gate for the Order of our Lady of the Sacred Heart Sisters compound as the wooden one was falling in and not secure at all. They were local Dinkas and did a decent job and cost me $750. Now as their fence is quite weak I am trying to get them to make another 100 metal poles. I am not sure that it will get done. But I shall keep trying. We are trying to do everything locally and not from Kenya.

Next year if money and workmen can be found I would like to build a permanent church in Marial Baai. We shall see how things work out and if God will dispose favorably to this plan of mine.

We’ll have a retreat for the High School and the class eights for the last weekend of November. Then in the middle of December there will be a general meeting for all the parish’s catechists. Afterward we shall go out to all the Centers to celebrate the Year of Saint Paul and the new translation of the New Testament into Dinka Rek and another Rumbek-based Comboni will do it for the catechists and six of the centers and I will do the rest. Father Colombo will be here to help me for Christmas. Boy, do I need help.


Also in September we had a course for the Eucharistic ministers and have the Eucharist kept in two chapels and taken to seven others from time to time.

May God bless you and keep you! Stay well and keep the faith.

Yours in the Sacred Heart

Fr. Michael Barton


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