ASIA/INDONESIA – Lay volunteers experience Mission on the Island of Flores

Tuesday, 24 February 2015

Maumere (Agenzia Fides) – From 13 January to 9 February “Volunteers of West Lessinia” lived an important experience of missionary work on the remote Island of Flores in Indonesia. “The charisma were many and diverse, but all were animated by one ideal: to be at least for a short while, ‘missionaries of the Gospel’ in the largest Muslim country on the planet”. Fides heard the story from Camillian Father Luigi Galvani, (MI) for several years present on the island. “The work field was the mission of the Camillian fathers present for some years now on the green Island of Flores, the poorest of the 17,000 islands which make up the Indonesian archipelago. The first lap of the mission was Ruteng, a pretty shady little town among the volcanic mountains in the north. Awaiting the group was the construction of a youth centre soon to house some thirty students. The three weeks stay will remain in the history of the Camillian mission both for the efficiency of the work and the atmosphere of friendship and affection created with the local people, especially the numerous children.”
“The team of 9 boys and 6 girls had become a big united family – Fr. Galvani continued -. The proof are the results: laying flooring and whitewashing of 11 room building, electrical system, construction of 8m tower a drinkable water deposit, entry ramp, lavatory fixtures and wash basins, erection of 2 monuments of San Camillo, painting of rooms, put up 4 cupboards/shelves, made 3 tables for meals and everything else... and all this will remain in the Mission’s history. Besides the experience of team work the group enjoyed time for shared prayer, brotherhood and pastoral and missionary contact. From Ruteng a 13 hour coach journey, all bends, took the group to Maumere, a humid and hot town on the south coast of the sea of Flores, the second work camp. Three days spent there were rich in fraternal intensity and real active charity with the distribution of food aid to poor children in the village Gere, donation of medicines arrived from the Ummi of Negrar for patients at the local hospital and the construction of a small home for Ambrogio a young man of 29 for almost year now with his leg fixed immobile between two large tree trunks, a village healer therapy for his schizophrenia. In only two days the young lions built the home, complete with lavatory, a new bed and mosquito nets”. (LG/AP) (24/2/2015 Agenzia Fides)


Share: