Salesians Commission 10 Missionary Volunteers

Salesians Commission 10 Missionary Volunteers

Photos: https://link.shutterfly.com/H6QchlIUSVb

The Salesians of the New Rochelle Province commissioned 10 lay missionaries during Evening Prayer on Thursday, Aug. 14, in the chapel of the Don Bosco Retreat Center at Haverstraw, N.Y.

The 5 men and 5 women had completed 3 weeks of orientation for mission, including fellowship, prayer, paperwork, cultural preparation, introduction to St. John Bosco and the Salesian charism, recreation, and some practical experience in St. John Bosco Parish in Port Chester, N.Y. The final week was a retreat alongside two dozen Salesians at the retreat house, Aug. 10-16.

Fr. Dominic Tran, SDB, provincial, presided at the commissioning, assisted by Adam Rudin, director of the Salesian Lay Missioner program.

The 10 SLMs are Ambroise Curutchague, 23, of Bakersfield, Calif., who will serve as a teacher at Don Bosco Agricultural Training College in Lufubu, Zambia; Nathaniel Devlin, 20, of Moline, Ill., also sent to the school in Lufubu; Emily Durr, 22, of Cincinnati, will serve as a clinic nurse at the Palabek, Uganda, refugee camp; Edwin Feliberty Jr., 37, of Jersey City, N.J., will join the staff of the National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians in Haverstraw, N.Y.; Alexandria Foos, 25, of Westerville, Ohio, will work with young girls at the Instituto Maria Auxiliadora in San Pedro Sula, Honduras; Douglas Hinman, 30, of Littleton, Colo., will teach English at the Don Bosco Institute in Alexandria, Egypt; Jennifer Lopez, 26, of Austin, Texas, will serve first in Madrid and then in Bangkok; Angel Nuñez-Arce, 20, of Chicago, will assist with youth ministry and music at Don Bosco Prep in Ramsey, N.J.; Sueshai Perez, 27, of Austin, will serve alongside Jennifer in Madrid and Bangkok; and Eileen Ramirez Quintana, 27, of Buckeye, Ariz., will teach English in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Fr. Dominic took his homiletic cue from the one-verse Scripture reading of Evening Prayer, Romans 8:30. That verse, he said, suggested John Calvin’s doctrine of predestination. But, he said, St. Paul’s wider context notes that God’s plan preceded creation and leads up to God’s predestining us to belong to him through Jesus Christ. The verse highlights Mary’s role in God’s plan. Her Assumption into heaven points to the call all of us have received as God’s children.

God has a plan for each of the lay missioners, Fr. Dominic stated, wherever they may be going. The Catholic understanding of God’s plan includes human freedom. We pray that God’s plan will go to and be fulfilled in all places on earth.

God’s Word is always alive and active, he continued. He told the volunteers that God has destined them to be missionaries of the Word, and as bearers of the Word to bring hope and life to the poor. This is God’s plan of love. “You are to be the instruments of God’s plan and God’s love,” Fr. Dominic told the ten women and men.

Every August, your humble blogger is recruited during the retreat week to guide the SLMs on a hike in Harriman State Park, which is very close to the retreat house.

On Tuesday the 12th, he brought them to Pine Meadow Lake, a 2-mile jaunt over a gradual ascent that mostly follows Stony Brook and Pine Meadow Brook to the lake. Photos: https://link.shutterfly.com/LPkR3eKXSVb

Celebrating Mass at Pine Meadow Lake

Seven Candidates Discerning SLM Call

Seven Candidates Discerning SLM Call

Over the April 10-12 weekend, five women and two men were in New Rochelle as part of their discerning a possible call to serve as Salesian Lay Missioners in 2015-2016. They came from Arizona, California, Florida, Nebraska, Nevada, and Pennsylvania and included a married couple with college-aged kids, a retired gentleman, and four collegiate women. Working with them were Adam Rudin, program director; Fr. Mark Hyde, director of Salesian Missions in New Rochelle; Fr. John Serio, Bro. Steve DeMaio, and returned SLMs Michelle Webb (India), Mike Gotta and Pat Sabol (South Sudan), and Manny Mendez (Bolivia). Photo above includes the seven candidates, Adam (far left), Fr. Mark (next to Adam), and Michelle (far right).

Volunteering to Serve

Volunteering to Serve

This week Salesian Missions, thru the Salesian Lay Missioners program, has been providing orientation to 14 new volunteers, most of them young (like right out of college) but a few apparently well beyond that. They're getting about a week of intercultural and other aspects of life in the missions, together with some young people from at least one other sponsoring organization, at Maryknoll.

That will be followed by a week or 10 days of experiencing Salesian youth ministry, and practicing it, at the summer day camp at our 2 Port Chester parishes, Holy Rosary and Corpus Christi. Finally, the new SLMs will make a 6-day spiritual retreat, together with about 20 SDBs who happen to making that particular retreat; they'll get some more theoretical orientation at the same time and complete on some of their final paperwork. On Aug. 6 Fr. Tom Dunne will commission them for their missions.

This morning I had the privilege of going up to Maryknoll to offer Mass for the SLMs and other trainees and then being available to them for Reconciliation.

Here's a photo of our 14 generous folks taken right after Mass. Most of them had their eyes open by then!

New Class of SLMs

New Class of SLMs

On the evening of July 5, while the country was finishing up its Independence Day celebrations, 23 young people with foreign ideas began to assemble at Maryknoll's center for lay missionaries.

They weren't Maryknollers, however, but Salesians--candidates to become the 2010 "batch" of Salesian Lay Missioners. Having already done a fair amount of discernment and been carefully vetted by the SLM staff in New Rochelle, they were starting 4 weeks of orientation that will lead up to their commissioning on August 7 and their departure soon after for various foreign destinations, such as Bolivia, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, and Rwanda.

Their first three orientation days, July 6-8, were dedicated to bonding as a group and starting to form Salesian identity. Your humble blogger was privileged to visit each of these days to celebrate Mass and Reconciliation for them and be part of their Salesian orientation. I was impressed in those few hours by their spirit of joy and enthusiasm, their courage and sense of adventure (not without a due amount of nervousness).

The candidates are being guided by Adam Rudin, director of the SLM program (himself a former volunteer in Bolivia), Jayne Feeney, who just returned from 11 months in Ethiopia, and Meg Fraino of the province's youth ministry office. During earlier discernment weekends many of the candidates met other former SLMs, and they've also been in touch with SLMs still on-site where they'll be going.

21 SLM candidates after Mass on July 8, with program director Adam Rudin (back row, left).

About 10 days follow--they're going on presently--of various forms of cultural orientation, under the direction of the Maryknoll Missioners, together with smaller volunteer groups from other sponsors. There are 10 volunteers coming from about 4 other sponsors.

The SLMs' third week will be spent in the Salesian day camps at Corpus Christi and Holy Rosary parishes in Port Chester, N.Y., learning some of the practical aspects of Salesian youth work, and reflecting upon the experience.

In the fourth week (Aug. 1-7) the SLMs will be on a quasi-retreat, getting further Salesian orientation (about Don Bosco, the Salesian Family, the Preventive System...) and finishing up necessary paperwork; this week coincides with one of the Salesian summer retreats, enabling the young volunteers to get to know actual SDBs and vice versa. At the retreat's closing Mass, Fr. Tom Dunne, the provincial, will commission them in the presence of and with the support of all the SDB retreatants.

The orientation period is part of the discernment process for both the Salesians and the SLM candidates. On the 3d day, one candidate departed after deciding this wasn't the moment for him to do this. Here's hoping the other 22, and the SLM staff, will discern God calling them to continue--and prayers for their success.

23 Lay Missionaries Commissioned

23 Lay Missionaries Commissioned

After four weeks of orientation at three sites, 18 young women and 5 young men were commissioned as Salesian Lay Missioners (SLMs) on Saturday, August 8.

Father Thomas Dunne, our provincial, presided over an early morning Mass at the Don Bosco Retreat Center in Haverstraw-Stony Point, New York. The Mass also marked the closing of the annual retreat for about 30 Salesians.

During the Mass the missionaries were presented with just-blessed crosses as a sign of their commitment to personal conversion and to the mission of carrying the love of Jesus Christ joyfully to their various sites.

The Salesian retreat coincided with the final week of the SLMs’ preparation, which had a retreat atmosphere and stressed Salesian spirituality, the Preventive System, and such specifics for their upcoming apostolic work. Mingling with Salesian priests and brothers at meals and recreation times, sharing the sacred liturgy with them, and listening to “good night” talks from Fr. Dunne and other Salesians, also helped the young people with their orientation toward Salesian mission.

Earlier weeks of orientation saw the future missionaries gather at Maryknoll in Ossining, New York, for training in culture, missiology, and the practicalities of going overseas, together with volunteers from Maryknoll and other groups. There was also a week of participation in the summer day camp program of the Salesian parishes in Port Chester, New York, in which the Salesian volunteers saw and practiced working with youngsters as Salesians do.

The 2009 class of SLMs come from 16 states (California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia), and from 19 dioceses (Allentown, Arlington, Boston, Camden, Dallas, Davenport, Denver, Fort Wayne-South Bend, Harrisburg, Jefferson City, Joliet, Los Angeles, Omaha, Philadelphia, Portland-Maine, Portland-Oregon, Sacramento, Santa Fe, and Tulsa).

Most of the SLMs are college graduates; one is just out of high school. Their colleges or universities include Alaska, Albion, Benedictine, Boston University, Catholic University, Coe, Dallas, Dayton, Holy Cross, Indiana, Los Angeles Valley College, Mt. St. Mary, New Hampshire, Northern Colorado, Notre Dame, Rutgers, St. Mary of the Woods, Shasta, Villanova, and Whitworth. They range in age from 18—the young woman just out of Bellflower High School in California; to 48—a woman with her own health care consulting business and experience as a college professor and hospital administrator.

Many of them also have some previous volunteer experience, including in foreign countries. One, Steve Widelski of Huntington, Indiana, will be taking part in his fourth voluntary service with the Salesians. He has previously had assignments in Bolivia, Venezuela, and Sierra Leone, as well as two and a half years in the Dominican Republic with the diocese of Orlando and six months in the state of Parana, Brazil, as part of a team from St. Louis de Montfort Parish in Fishers, Indiana. Not only does he love Don Bosco and the Salesian charism, but in 2008 he and another SLM veteran on their initiative even produced a promotional video about the program.

The SLMs this year will be missioned to five sites in Bolivia; three in India; one each in Brazil; Cambodia; Ethiopia; Mexico; Rwanda; and South Africa. They may be helping in orphanages, teaching catechism or academic courses or agriculture, doing manual work, providing medical assistance, or offering other forms of spiritual and material apostolic work. Some of the American volunteers are looking forward to collaborating with Salesian volunteers from Austria, Italy, and Poland.

The 2009 “class” of Salesian Lay Missionaries, with Fr. Tom Dunne, provincial (back row, center), Fr. Mark Hyde, director of Salesian Missions in New Rochelle (far right in alb and stole), and Adam Rudin, director of the lay missionary program (next to Fr. Mark).