August 2011

The latest news from the
mission parish of
Our Lady of Guadalupe
in Atchanvé, Togo, West Africa.

Dear Friends,

                       Greetings from Togo.  I have been having some laptop and camera problems that I hope to resolve when I return home for my annual visit in late August, so unfortunately there won’t be any new photos included with this brief report, but I did want to fill you in on some of the news from the mission here.  Next time I hope to be able to show you some pictures and maybe even some video footage.

            Our many construction projects are continuing slowly but surely:

• We have installed all of the equipment, including a used industrial oven adapted to be able to use charcoal, for our mission bakery, which will soon open.  This will enable us to provide fresh bread at reasonable prices for this whole area, as well as employment for a few workers.

 

• We have completed the building of our center for the production of cassava flour and palm oil, which we hope will help support the mission and give our poor farmers some extra income from their agricultural labors.  Our first cassava harvest in our participating villages will be in October.  We hope to have the palm oil machinery shortly after that.

• Our three-village water project at Atchanvé-Avégan-Bédjémé, with its water tower, solar panels, pipeline and faucets is in operation.

 

• We have been able to redo the old mud chapel at the village here, as we plan ahead for the construction of a real parish church.  We’ve even installed solar electricity in the chapel so we have lighting and can make use of our portable sound system

• Schools are now being built in six of our villages.  We start with the youngest children and add a classroom or classrooms for one grade per year as the students progress.  Since January we have begun building the kindergarten classrooms for our three newest schools at Avégan, Kpoguéré and Tsati.  Before I head home to the States, on three successive Sundays we’ll have a special Mass and blessing of the kindergartens in those villages, followed by registration of the children for classes which will begin in September.  A tailor from each village will be there to measure the children for their uniforms.

 

            It’s satisfying to see all this material evidence of the mission’s progress, but I find my deepest joy when I can see that the Gospel is having an impact on people’s lives.  For example:

• We had a marvelous Easter season.  This year we decided to handle the baptism of our catechumens differently from last year when we did them all at the Easter vigil here at the mission and then on Easter Sunday at one of the villages toward the southern end of our parish.  This year we did the baptisms separately at Masses in the catechumens’ own nine villages, on the seven Sundays of the Easter season, as well as on Ascension Thursday and on Pentecost Sunday.  That made for great celebrations not only for the 150 catechumens and their families, but also for other villagers who were able to attend, and I think it gave a good boost to our evangelization efforts.

 

• Our monthly confessions on the Thursday evening before our First Friday catechist meetings have become more and more popular.  This month we had nearly 200 confessions.  It’s gotten to the point where I have had to send our driver long distances to pick up a couple of Togolese priests from two neighboring parishes to help me out.  They then spend the night and he drives them back the next morning.  It was inspiring to see almost all the 20 children whom we had baptized at Tsati arrive for their First Confession after walking for over five hours to the mission.  We combine exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, singing and instruction with the confessions, and a many of the people spend the night in the chapel before heading back to their villages after the 6 a.m. Mass the next morning. 

• We’ve started a very popular project of showing religious movies after dark at our secondary stations.  In the shipping container we sent here last year we had included a 7 x 12 foot inflatable screen, on which we project DVD’s from a projector powered by a small portable generator that we can take on our pickup truck to our villages.  We’ve shown the French versions of The Passion of the Christ and Jesus of Nazareth, with Sister Marcelle Pascaline making frequent use of the pause button to explain things in Ewe and to evangelize.  There are a few religious DVD’s with Ewe dubbed in, such as the story of the Charles Lwanga and the Martyrs of Uganda that we’ll be showing soon.  It seems that whenever we go to one of our secondary stations with a movie the entire village comes to see it.  That’s great because it means we reach unbaptized persons with the Gospel message who would not normally be attending Mass in their villages when we are able to celebrate it there.

 

Once again this year, in early October, we will be sending a shipping container in from St. Martin’s Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland to the Togo mission.  Please check back to the website for a list of the donated items we’ll be looking for.  And please continue to keep the mission here in your prayers, as you are in ours.

Thanks and God bless,

                  Fr. William Ryan