Goodbye

Hello everyone,

This will be my last post to this blog as I have discerned that I should leave seminary formation for the priesthood.  There are some mixed emotions in this, sadness as I have been on this track for three years, so it is a part of me, but greater joy since I feel that this is what God wants me to do.  I have had very clear answer to my prayers asking God for guidance.  He has made it clear that the priesthood is not the route He wishes me to go at this point.  I say, “at this point” not because I am second guessing the decision, but simply because God works in mysterious ways and I don’t know all of where my life will go.

My time in seminary has been great: I have grown closer to God, learned a lot, and grown into a better man.  If you ever know a man who is considering the seminary and open to the possibility of the priesthood I hope that you will encourage him.  Some of them will go all the way to priesthood, some wont, but all of them will be better for it.

I am sorry that I have not been able to tell everyone of this decision individually.  I am even busier than ever as I am finishing the academic year and still fully involved in the formation process until the day I walk out of here.  I am also job hunting, who knows where God will take me, but I will go wherever I feel Him leading.

I want to take a moment to thank everyone for their support during this process.  Specifically my Bishop, my vocation directors, and my family, but everyone else as well.

Peace,

Adam

March 2013

Hello everyone,

What an incredible month it has been for the Church.  Almost right after I posted the last time Pope Benedict XVI announced that through his prayerful discernment he was going to retire from the papacy.  This is a great example of humility for all of us, the humility which Christ calls us each to.  I find it wonderful when we contrast this with the decision which Pope John Paul II made to stay in office through immense physical suffering and trouble.  I heard it put in a great way, “Pope John Paul II stayed in office to show us how to die with dignity while Pope Benedict XVI left office to show us how to live with humility.”

This past week we had the election of Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas, the first pope from outside Europe in over 1000 years, the first Jesuit pope, and by all appearances so far a man that will be a great Vicar of Christ.  By now I am sure that everyone has seen and heard of Pope Francis’ life of humility and simplicity.  One thing that isn’t talked about much is his life before the Jesuits.  Pope Francis was raised in a simple family, his father was a rail worker who immigrated to Argentina from Italy.  Pope Francis had gone through school and gotten a master’s degree in chemistry before deciding to enter the Jesuits.  I think that this is going to be a great sign for those who believe falsely that the Catholic Church is against science.  Throughout history many of the greatest scientists were Catholic clergy and this may give people reason to look into what the Church teaches on science rather than simply their own assumptions and false information from whatever source they get it.

As for me, my discernment continues to go well.  I am still praying to God for guidance.  I will say that I believe that I have gotten an answer to this prayer, a very clear answer.  But I am not going to post here what that answer is for a while.  I am working with my spiritual director to be sure of what I think I received.  I will in good time tell you whether this means that I am going to leave seminary or set the question aside. 

My classes are going well.  I have five of them this semester.  I have Christology, studying simply about Christ.  I have Synoptic Gospels, talking about Matthew, Mark and Luke.  I have Church History II from 1000AD to present.  I have Supervised ministry: Pastoral Care which is the companion course for my going out to that teaching parish and we are focusing on care to the sick, suffering, and dying.  My final class in Ministry in the American culture, which is a very broad topic class focusing on issues that are being and will be faced during our lifetimes.

That is enough at this point.  I hope everyone is well and ask you to keep Pope Francis in your prayers.

Peace,

Adam

Early February 2013

Wow, I knew it had been a while since I had written, I just didn’t know how long.  Since my last post I have been trying to focus on my own discernment completely, sorry for leaving off on what I was doing.  I have been trying every possible angle, spiritual and intellectual, to try to understand what God wants from my life.  This post is not me saying that I have it figured out, but rather that I want to get back to blogging about this curvy path God is taking me on.

I’ll start by describing a bit of what I have done extra for the discernment during this time.  Most of this is simply stuff that I have done before, but to a greater extent.  I am spending extra time in prayer, focusing on simply expressing my openness to God, whatever His will might be.  I am asking Him to let me know what His will is.  I am praying that the Blessed Mother ask her Son to let me know, and the other Saints in Heaven.   I am looking back at the early posts of this blog, the ones in which I talked about what got me to this point of applying to seminary.  I am looking at the feedback I have gotten since being in seminary, both inside myself and from others.  This mid-January and early February we had two things, one a “prayer conference” (basically a retreat in everything but name) and the other an actual retreat.  I have spent the vast majority of my time during these weeks praying about discernment.  I feel that I am far closer to a decision than I have ever been, but not close enough to decide, and not close enough to tell what that decision is looking like, until I know.

Fall semester went well.  Along the lines of discernment, I had one thing that occurred officially within the seminary.  I know that I have written in the past about the Rite of Admission to Candidacy for Holy Orders.  At Mundelein it was done during third year theology, so not long before a man is ordained a deacon.  Basically what is being said by the man is that he intends on being a priest, it is no formal commitment, but that is a big thing to say in front of people in a Church, as an official rite, in my mind.  At St. Paul Seminary Candidacy is done during first year, and very early on.  However, my bishop wanted me and the one other guy in my class here from the La Crosse Diocese to do Candidacy in our home Diocese, so we sat out while our class declared candidacy.  We were scheduled to declare at the Christmas party on December 28^th.  About a month to a month and a half before the vocation director, Fr. Wierzba, was coming up and I asked if I could speak with him about this and when I asked if I could delay even further he was fine with it, but since the Bishop had come with him, he wanted me to speak with the Bishop.  I was a bit nervous about both of these meetings.  I was afraid that it might come out that if I was having this level of doubts I should just leave seminary right away, not something I felt prepared to do.  Both meetings went well and my admission to candidacy is moved to June some time.  I feel that if I am willing to declare at that point I will most likely go all the way to being a priest, if I am not willing to declare then, I should step out of seminary.

Other than that, not a lot actually happened during the fall semester.  I really like the teaching parish program that the St. Paul Seminary has.  I get to go to a parish in Menomonie, WI one weekend a month and then one or two week days as time allows.  It is nice to get away and deal with a normal parish.  I have done lots of little things around there, simply getting to know the parish.

I think that is all I’m going to write for now.  I hope to get back into a fairly regular every week or two writing again.

Peace,
Adam

Fall semeseter 2012-2013 course summary

Hello again,

So, I am starting to settle in here at St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity.  In many ways it has been an easy adjustment since I was already at a major seminary when I was at Mundelein, but there are enough differences that there have been some things that take a bit of getting used to. 

Most major seminaries (maybe all of them) in the country have guys in theology wearing clerical clothing, the shirts with the funny collars.  This is something I expected, but it does take some getting used to.  At Mundelein, for the most part evenings were casual, out of dress code.  But here we have to be in dress code through supper.  This is a minor thing, but a takes a bit getting used to. 

The course work here is pretty good.  It seems to me that the workload is a little lighter due to being on the semester system instead of the quarter system that Mundelein had.  I have some pretty good classes and enjoy my instructors well enough.  At Mundelein I gave a rundown of which courses I had each quarter, so I’ll do that here by semester, I will start at the beginning of Monday and go until I get through all of the courses, so that is the only order I am using.

My first class on Mondays is Communication Skills for Ministry.  I didn’t really know what that was when it showed up on my schedule.  It is pretty much so far a music course, but it seems like the instructors are teaching, rather than just having us sing as I complained about in the choir class at Mundelein.  I think that this course will also have us practice reading for Mass.  This is important because later this year we will be installed as lectors, and surprisingly few of us have ever read at Mass. 

The second class I have on Monday’s is History of Christian Tradition I.  We have already covered a bit of the pre-Christian era and will be going through the ideas of where Christianity comes from and its development all the way to the Renaissance time frame. 

My last class on Monday is called Supervised Ministry: Mission of a Parish.  This class ties in with the teaching parish program which I will mention later but is kind of basically to give us an idea of what a parish is about from the intent of the Church through Canon Law and such, even if that isn’t what we always see.  It is a once a week course so kind of just an overview.

Tuesdays I pick up the other three classes that I have this semester, obviously most of these meet twice a week, but I don’t figure you need my whole schedule.  My first class on Tuesdays is Introduction to Sacraments and Worship.  I think that the title is pretty self-explanatory in that we will begin to learn what should be going on in the liturgy and why.  We will also be touching both on the theology behind the sacraments and the way that they happen, stuff that will obviously be expanded on in later years.

The second class I have on Tuesdays is called Old Testament: Pentateuch.  The Pentateuch is the first five books of the Bible, what Jewish people refer to as the Torah.  Since this is our first scripture class here at St. Paul Seminary we are starting out learning about different approaches to reading and interpreting scripture and then we will be applying them to the Pentateuch and then a bit more of the Old Testament.  The most common method of biblical interpretation for Catholics is called the Historical-Critical Method.  In this method quite a bit of time is spent looking at old copies of the texts to figure out which are closest to what the inspired authors intended, then looking at what was going on at the time and the literary genre the text is written in and then figuring out how it can be applied today.

The last of my classes this semester is Foundational Theology.  This is a course that in the past might have been called Fundamental Theology or even Systematic Theology.  It is a course about theology, what it is, what purpose does it have, how do we do theology and how do we use it.  This course is also going to  begin to get us doing theology.

In addition to these courses we have morning prayer, Mass, and evening prayer every day.  We also have a formation session as a class on Wednesday mornings.  We each meet with our spiritual directors and formation directors every two to three weeks.  So again, seminary is very busy.

One really cool thing that St. Paul Seminary does is that they have what is called the Teaching Parish Program.  Each seminarian is assigned a teaching parish that they are to go to for all four years.  If a guy’s teaching parish is less than 60 miles away they go one Sunday a month and every Wednesday, if, like mine it is over 60 miles we are required to go for one full weekend and one Wednesday a month, although I will probably do a little more since I like the opportunity to be at the parish.  Each semester has different goals for the teaching parish program, this semester for my class is simply to get to know the pastor and the parish. 

Well, That is probably a long enough update.  Again I ask for your prayers and assure you of mine.

Peace,

Adam

Orientation at St. Paul Seminary

Hello again,

My first class at St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity is today.  I have been here about a week for orientation and am getting pretty settled in.  I have had a lot of people ask me to compare the differences between here and Mundelein Seminary where I was at.  There are a lot of small differences, but on the whole there is a lot that is the same.  It is a major seminary still where men participate in their final years of formation for the priesthood.  That is the essential and that is the same at both places.  I really want to hold off on comparisons until I’ve been here a bit longer.

Orientation was great.  It was a combination between getting to know what we needed to live here and growing fellowship amongst the new guys.  The orientation included guys starting in pre-theology and starting in theology.  Here they didn’t divide us apart as much as they had at Mundelein so it took quite a while to get a feel for who is in my class in first theology and who is in pre-theology. 

We did a lot of social activities, spiritual activities and generally getting us the information we needed.  For social activities we have had a pizza party, watched a movie, gone on a dinner cruise on the St. Croix River, among other things.  Spiritually we have of course had Mass every day and liturgy of hours.  We also did a one day pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, to spend time praying together away from the seminary.  It has been a fun week, but so much more than that.  The guys that I am with are great.

I know this is a lot of generalities, but I wanted to give just a quick update of what I’ve been up to here.

Peace,

Adam

Discernment update after two years in seminary

Hello again,

I know that I have not updated how my discernment of my vocation has been going in a long time.  Wow, with that starting line, let me tell you right away that I am staying in seminary, so you don’t think that I am saying that I am leaving seminary based on that line.  All of what I’m telling you in this has been discussed with my spiritual director at Mundelein, along with other priests and seminarians that I trust.

It has now been over two years since I first showed up at Mundelein Seminary.  Tomorrow I move to St. Paul seminary.  At Mundelein I completed the pre-theology program and in St. Paul I will be beginning the Theology program.  This is a big transition that I am excited for and that I think will help me to figure out in life if the life of a priest is what I’m called to, a change of perspective often seems to help me clarify things.

This past year has been a great struggle for me as discernment is concerned.  Towards the end of my first year of pre-theology I began to seriously wonder if I was doing the right thing being in seminary.  However, I knew at that time that I had to keep moving forward in seminary because I did have enough thought that I was called to be a priest so I wanted to keep giving that to God. 

Over the summer after first pre-theology I was at the Boy Scout camp as you know if you’ve read this.  I thought that the time at scout camp would be good for me to discern, I thought that either I would love the ministry side completely or I would feel the great desire to be a dad to a kid like what I was dealing with.  The problem was that I felt both, so it wasn’t very helpful for discernment.

Returning to Mundelein for second pre-theology I had some doubts still, but had enough thought that I was called to being a priest that I felt the need to continue on discerning.  This was really challenged when I soon found out that the job I had previously dreamed of had opened up.  I was really tempted to apply for that job, but I knew that I owed it to God to stay in seminary and continue to discern my vocation in life.

During second pre-theology I continued to discern through prayer, thinking, and talking to priests and seminarians I trust.  Often I felt like I was spinning my wheels in this discernment, I wasn’t getting much clarity one way or the other.  I then began to look at myself quite a bit.  I looked at my love for the Eucharist… as I examined it through prayer I knew for sure that I love the whole Eucharist, but I am especially drawn to the Precious Blood.  I am not sure if this truly means anything, but I spent a lot of time praying about that.  I was reminded of a permanent Deacon told me one time about his love for the Precious Blood and how the Deacon is the official minister of the cup. 

This thinking opened up a whole new line of thought, maybe I am called to the permanent Deaconate after marriage.  This took a lot of my discernment.  I know some people who say that the permanent Deaconate is a “best of both worlds” thing, but I see it as truly a separate vocation and calling.  I hadn’t thought of the permanent Deaconate in a long time in regards to myself.  So now I was trying to discern between the three vocations that hold attraction to me at all: Priesthood, Permanent Deaconate after marriage, and marriage without Deaconate.  I don’t see any sign that I feel called to the single life as a vocation, so I really don’t think of that much.

As the year went on with my discussions with others I tried to figure this out, I still felt that there was enough of a chance that I’m called to the priesthood that I want to continue in seminary, at least for now, maybe all the way to Ordination. 

Discernment is part of why I am very excited about the transfer to St. Paul Seminary.  I think that a change in setting and people will help me to clarify what God is calling me to.  I am so excited about that. 

I promised myself when I started this blog that I would always be honest with anyone who reads it about where I was at discernment wise so that is why I wrote this.  I ask you all to keep me, and all those discerning God’s call in their life in your prayers.

On another note, I wrote this post over a long period of time, so I hope that the choppiness of it doesn’t matter too much.

Peace,

Adam

Tuesday through Thursday of my experience with Catholic Relief Services in Burkina Faso

Hello again,

Summer is beginning to wind down so I thought that I would write a post to finish out the trip to Burkina Faso.  Part of the reason that I was trying to write all of this was of course to share this information with you, about the wonderful work that CRS does, but also to remember it for myself.  I have my journal that I wrote on the trip, and the notes from the visits, so I am able to use this and my memory from the trip I think that I can still do it justice… as much as I ever have.  I will try to finish out the trip in this post, but we’ll see how long it gets.

Tuesday started out a little bit of a tourist day, but any tourism in a situation like this is somewhat cultural.  We went to a site called Laongo.  Laongo is an outdoor art park.  It had many sculptures of both rock and metal.  The rock carvings tended to be in granite.  This is a place for both Burkinabe and foreign artists to display their work.  The main themes running through this park were the ideas of the difficult struggles of life, but also the hope for the future.  I can remember one sculpture in particular; I’ll see if I can figure out how to upload a picture to the blog.  This was a sculpture in granite that had a human face carved in it with a large rock on top of the head.  Once you looked closely, you noticed that one side of the face was a woman and the other was a man.  The heavy part of the rock on the head was over the woman, the rock symbolized that all Burkinabe seem to have the weight of the world on them, but it seems to be pushing down on the women even more.  A constant theme that I saw during the trip was the amazing power of the Burkinabe women, they seemed to support the families the most and have the most responsibility thrust onto them.

We left Laongo and went to visit a seminary in Ouagadougou.  This is their theology seminary, the last four years before priesthood.  It served both Burkina Faso and some other nearby countries.  The set-up there is a little different; the seminarians are responsible to cover their own expenses for the most part.  It costs about $1500.00 per seminarian per year, a huge burden remembering that the average income in Burkina Faso is $345.00 per person per year.  I don’t know how they manage; with the language barrier it was difficult to get an answer to that.  For the most part the seminarians seemed as I had expected, fun loving men who love what they are doing.  When we had a talk with them through translators I saw them coming in and as with anywhere else they looked for their friends to sit with, seminarians aren’t that different from everyone else.

Following the seminary we visited a warehouse where CRS keeps the food that it distributes.  It has a large warehouse which holds 6000 metric tons of food and two smaller ones that each holds 1000 metric tons.  The warehouse is restocked twice a year with about 80 trucks to a shipment.  There are many of the things that you would expect stored there, rice, soy products, lentils, corn, and oil for cooking.  It all has to be stored in the warehouse like this so that it doesn’t go bad in the weather, so it is taken out to the people from here as the programs allow.  One thing that was pretty cool about that warehouse was how tall the stacks of food were and that all the bags were carried in and stacked by hand, large bags are 50 Kg (110 lbs) and small ones 25 Kg (55 lbs) and the staff stacks them all very high and very neatly.  It is great that they have this facility in case there is ever a disruption to one of the shipments they could go on for a little while to continue serving.

That evening we had the opportunity to visit with the Archbishop of Ouagadougou for a bit.  He gave us a history of the Catholic Church in Burkina Faso and was generally a pleasant Man to visit with.

Wednesday was Ash Wednesday; I couldn’t help thinking how appropriate it was to be in Burkina Faso at that time.  I somewhat associated it with them living in an ongoing Lent.  What I mean by this is that the Burkinabe live with challenges and struggles all the time, but they also have a joyful hope for what is to come, hopefully for them, assuredly for all during Lent.

On Wednesday we spent some time visiting an orphanage in Ouagadougou named Kizito Center.  Kizito Center was founded in 1931.  It started as simply an orphanage, but now also cares for children who are abandoned and some other social reasons that they can’t be cared for by their family.  Kizito does not receive any state support; it is run by the Archdiocese and tries to get some funding elsewhere as it can.  From time to time CRS helps out too, but that depends on their resources as to how much.  We gave them one of the sheep which we had been given during the trip.  Kizito has a high rate of the children being adopted, most locally but some international adoptions.

Wednesday evening we had a meeting with the Secretary General of the Episcopal Conference.  For those unfamiliar with the Catholic verbiage there this is the man who runs the day to day operations for the organization that unites the Bishops in the area, this conference includes Burkina Faso and also neighboring Niger.  He told us that the Church in Burkina Faso is growing and that they have just created two new dioceses in the area.  One thing that he stressed quite heavy was the desire that they have for a relationship with the Church in the rest of the world.  They realize that at this point they need aide from the rest of the world, but they hope someday to be even more partners in faith. 

The Secretary General talked quite a bit about the relationship that the Catholics have with others in the area.  Muslims are the dominate group in the country and they have a good working relationship with them.  One of the reasons for this is the Catholic aide organizations that serve people of all faiths.  He told us that this has been noticed and appreciated and that the Muslim groups are getting better about doing the same, and even working together.  We were told that there is actually a better working relationship with the Catholics and Muslims than with the Catholics and Evangelical Protestant Christians.  The Evangelicals tend to only serve those who come to their churches and that has caused some animosity among both Catholics and Muslims towards them.

Thursday was a day of reflection and saying goodbye before we left.  We had a recap meeting at the CRS headquarters and it was great to summarize what we had done and say goodbye to the wonderful staff of CRS Burkina Faso.

That is the end of the summary of my experience with Catholic Relief Services in Burkina Faso, thank you for reading.  If you feel so moved I encourage you to support CRS at www.CRS.org

PEACE,

Adam

Summer update 2012

Wow, I just looked and it has been about two months since I have posted.  I have thought about putting up a post many times but I want to write a good one and I just haven’t been able to find the time with the way that my summer has been going.  So I decided just now that I will sit down and pound out a quick post to have something new up here.  I am still hoping to find time to finish writing about my wonderful experience with CRS in Burkina Faso this past February, but that has not happened yet.  It will and I will make sure to make those posts good.  Please continue to pray for the people of Burkina Faso as they are indeed enduring a drought and food crisis as predicted.  If you hear about the food crisis in the Sahel that is a region of which Burkina Faso is just a part.

So, since my last post I had a couple of weeks that were supposedly down time, catching up on a lot of little things is more accurately what I did.  I then had my interview with St. Paul seminary.  It was a much simpler process there than when I went to interview at Mundelein.  At Mundelein there had been 3 separate interviews with 2 people each.  The interview in St. Paul was one interview with 3 people and took about an hour.  Sitting in was the vice rector, a member of the academic faculty, and a member of the spiritual faculty.  The interview went well, and before I left I was told that they were going to recommend me for acceptance.  I received my acceptance letter a few weeks later.

After my interview I went up to northern Minnesota to visit relatives and relax a bit.  It was a great trip which I was able to end by going over to Superior Wisconsin to see a friend ordained as a priest.  After returning from that trip I spent a bit more time getting little things that I had been delaying done and then we had to get going with staff week at the Boy Scout camp.  It was a great staff week, we had about half the staff as new staff members and the rest were returning from the past.  Because this is my second year here I had a better clue what is going on and was able to have more fun with it. 

Scouts started coming right after the staff week.  It has been an interesting year for the homesick aspect that I deal with.  The first week was my busiest week and then the second week was my least busy week for dealing with homesickness.  I think it was because the first week had bad weather at the beginning of the week that a lot of the guys started out not liking it here.

Since then my weeks have been about normal.  We had the week of the Independence Day off.  I started the week by going to the wedding for one of my best friends.  It was a very special occasion.  I was so happy for her.  It was on my birthday and I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my birthday than to see a dear friend get married.   After that I drove to Stevens Point where I spent the week off.  I had a few people ask if turning thirty was hard on me, it wasn’t, just another year. 

The week in Stevens Point was terribly hot, so I didn’t do as much outdoors as I had wanted to, but I found plenty to keep me busy.  I ended the week by spending a bit of time with the priest that Baptized me.  He is assigned to our Diocesan mission parish in Bolivia, but was home for a while and subbed in at Newman.  I was able to talk to him some and go to dinner with him, so that was nice.

I am now back at camp and have a couple of weeks left.  We are done at the end of July and then in early August I will go to Indiana for a wedding of another of my best friends (I have a lot of really close friends that I just consider them all best friends)  I am the best man in this wedding, so that is pretty exciting.  I will then have a bit of down time in August before going up to St. Paul Seminary on August 30^th.

Well, that is a brief catch up, sorry it has been so long, and I will try to write again sooner.

Peace,

Adam

Monday of my experience in Burkina Faso with CRS Globalfellows

Hello again,

As the quarter (and the school year) winds down I have a bit of time to post more about the wonderful experience I had with Catholic Relief Services in Burkina Faso.  Since I have noticed a bit of new activity on here I will step back a moment for those who haven’t been reading about this trip since I started posting on it.  This experience that I had was with the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) program called Globalfellows.  Globalfellows is a program where CRS takes priests, deacons, and seminarians to witness their great works in action.  They do this so that these men can come back to the United States to tell about what they saw and the great work that CRS is doing, hopefully educating people to the need and the ability to help through supporting CRS.  They say that this is more of a “come and see” than a “come and do” so that we can have a better overall knowledge of the programs in a specific place to be able to share.  We had Mass every day but I don’t include a lot of details about that or our prayer time since it was often just our group participating, we had three priests along, plus myself and 5 other seminarians in addition to two staff members from CRS in the US.

My last post of the trip concluded Sunday and our experience at the local parish.  Sunday night we were back in the Pacific Hotel in Kaya. 

Our first project to visit was a food distribution site and nutrition program.  This is a program that CRS administers, but much of the food and I think much of the funding comes from  USAID (United States Agency for International Development) an international aid program of the US government.  USAID relies on other aid groups to do much of the on the ground work for the good work that it does, in Burkina Faso and many other places CRS is the main organization that they work with.  This allows CRS to do farm more than it would be able to on its own, but also includes some restrictions on what they do. 

This food distribution site was in a place called Taparko by the best that I could figure out.  It is one of the many villages over a great deal of area that makes up what is often referred to as Tougouri, the main village where the parish I had stayed at for the weekend was.  One of the restrictions that USAID has with the food distribution program in Taparko is that it has to focus on pregnant women and mothers who are still nursing their babies.  There simply isn’t enough food to distribute to all so they do the best that they can.  Each woman that qualifies gets a ration according to how they qualify.  If they are pregnant or nursing they are given 6 kg of a corn soy blend flour type mix, they are also given 0.65 liters of oil to use in cooking.  If they qualify for this and have small children they are given a little bit more of each of these and 2 kg of lentils.   All for the month. (The numbers I say are the best I could figure out, I was a bit confused as we were being told as to what exactly was being talked about)

This site also helps teach women skills to raise their children in a healthier manor.  One of the biggest issues is that they don’t normally breast feed children in the culture.  I don’t know the reasoning behind this, but it isn’t done.  They switch the babies to solid food or mixes far sooner than is good for them.  This program is a way to encourage breastfeeding to at least six months old to give the child a healthier start.  There is also access to a nurse and some medical attention that is provided at the nutrition site since most of the people in these areas don’t get medical care often.

We had some time to talk to people who were receiving food in addition to helping with the distribution (I say helping, but we were far slower than those who normally do the distribution).  I spoke with one woman named Sonde who had 3 children but one had died.  Sonde was pregnant again and was very thankful both for the food and the education which would help her to provide a better chance for her coming child.  As with most of the women, Sonde said that the ration given under the restrictions wouldn’t last the whole month, not just for her but she used it to help provide for her whole family.  She appreciated the food because even though it didn’t last the whole time (she said about 5-7 days was all she got out of it) it did help her family to stretch out what they could get on their own and had additional nutrition compared to that food.

After we went away from Taparko we went to see a BRIGHT school.  I don’t remember right now what that acronym stands for, and I don’t have my materials around to look it up.  BRIGHT schools are built in two phases and include both classrooms and places for teachers to live.  The first phase is for grades 1-3 and the second 4-6.  There is only one class per grade but that seems like enough for these villages.  We had some trouble getting to the site in the bus because the road was washed out, but eventually we made it. 

We pulled up in the bus and I looked out the window to see a couple of shrubs dancing.  As I have said, many of the sites we visited greeted us with dancing and song, but this was the first one with what I think of as traditional costumes.  They were costumes with long strands of fur or hair or something swinging around.  They were brown and black.  The dancers were wearing the traditional wooden masks that were brightly painted, the kind of thing you see in museums.  They also had long poles on the top of their heads with these strands on them that they swung around, sometimes at people, while they were dancing.  These were traditional costumes of the Gormanchi tribe.

The whole village was out to greet us again.  We walked around the school briefly and then had a sit down session with the village elders and those who worked at the school.  The chief of the village was too old to come out, but his representative was there to say thank you to us for what CRS has done for the village.  It was wonderful to hear about the appreciation for the school.  Classes were taught in French as best as I could tell, since that is the official language of Burkina Faso.  I think there was some teaching in Morae, the most common spoken language, but I wasn’t sure of that.  The classes were pretty evenly split between boys and girls but heavier on the side of girls attending school, not fitting with the stereotype that we have.

I was interested to hear about the change in the culture of emphasis on schooling for the children.  I don’t know how long the school had been there but it seems that the parents and other members of the village saw a great deal of importance in education, this is a big step in the culture.  We were told that even in places where schools are available most people don’t send their children to school.  They are in need of the child’s contribution to supporting the family through work in the fields and around the house.  To help with this CRS has figured out that you increase the education if they provide what is called “take-home rations”  What this is is that if a child has at least 90% attendance for the month they will receive a certain amount of food to take home for the family.  In this way the children are both getting an education and helping to support the family. 

The school also tries to provide the kids with lunch, but they don’t always have enough food for this.  Amazingly, the villagers had gathered together and donated food to the school so that the kids could get a meal while being educated.  Looking around I realized that the donated food probably meant that those who had donated it skipped a few meals to be able to provide, what a wonderful display of love for the children and the importance of education.  Villagers told us that they hoped to get a high school someday for the kids, or toys for the pre-school area but in general they were simply thankful for what they had.

After the visit to the BRIGHT school we went to have lunch with CRS field workers and others in the area.  There were some of the priests from the nearby villages that came out to this picnic lunch.  One of them was Father Samuel, the priest from Tougouri.  When I had packed for this trip I packed with the thought that I would leave some of my cloths behind as gifts for the people.  I figured that Father Samuel would be the one to get them after I had spoken to him when we were at his parish.  His face just lit up when the translator explained that they were for him.  Since I am much bigger than him I assume that he made some of the cloths work for him, but probably gave most of them to his parishioners whom they might fit better.  It was a great feeling seeing the joy on his face at receiving these cloths.

Well, that pretty much finishes Monday of this trip since we had a long bus ride back to Ouagadougou. 

Peace,

Adam  

Spring quarter 2011-2012

Hello again,

I realized that since I have been posting on my wonderful experience with Catholic Relief Services I have not posted my customary post about what classes I will be taking this quarter.  I think that since the quarter is more than halfway over I should do that.  I will get back to posting about the trip in my next post.

The spring quarter of second year pre-theology is a very heavy course load.  We joke that it is designed to weed guys out before they start theology, but I think that it just falls that way in the natural progression of classes.  I have six classes while still keeping up with all the other stuff around here, such as prayer time, Mass, formation sessions, formation advising meetings, spiritual direction meetings, field education, and whatever else comes up.  I am continuing to work at the library as well.  I am writing this without my schedule handy, so I may get a title wrong, but it will be close.

My first class is the “Study of Church and Religion.”  In this class we are going slowly through a theological book that talks about the development of understanding on the topic of “Is there Salvation outside the Church.”  This is really teaching us to look at the ways that doctrines have been developed as we go into our theological studies next year.  It is an interesting class to see how there has been advances in a doctrine and setbacks.  The question of the book is interesting as well, but you can ask me about that another time if you’d like.

My second class is Epistemology.  Epistemology is the branch of philosophy the tries to understand learning.  We are reading mostly modern and contemporary philosophers on the subject, since it hasn’t been addressed in a long time.  We did look briefly at ancient philosophers to see what they thought.  The topic doesn’t interest me a whole lot, but I really like the professor, who I’ve had before, and it is kind of fun debating some of the philosophers that we read, some of their ideas seem to be way out there on the logic spectrum.

The third class that I have is contemporary philosophy.  This could also be called “post-modern” in philosophical talk.  This is the era that we live in, and we are looking at the way that people are thinking now.  It is pretty fun to see how the lines that these thinkers expand on play out in every day thought.  Much of this is answering the questions that were raised during modern philosophy, so it gives us great insight into those around us.

Class number four is Introduction to the Devout Life.  The course is titled based on the book of the same title from St. Francis de Sales.  This course seems to be a way of helping us to learn how to better participate in spiritual reading.  How to take a work and see how it can guide our faith.  The first book we read was C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters.  This work, written from the perspective of a lead tempter for the Devil gives great insight into the ways that all people, us included, slip in doing what is write.  We are now into the title book and going through that slowly to glean the wisdom of St. Francis de Sales in spiritual growth.

My fifth class is Introduction to Mariology.  This is obviously a beginner’s course on the study of Mary.  Mariology is an important part of the Catholic tradition, not for itself, but in how it links to Christology and Ecclesiology (study of the Church).  Mariology helps with understanding and guiding us towards her Son.

The last class that I have this quarter is Philosophy Seminary II.  This is kind of a capstone class for the two years of pre-theology.  We spend the first couple of weeks looking at philosophical topics that hadn’t fit into any of our other classes.  Now we are each doing a 40 minute presentation on a topic of our choice that we wish to expand on from the past two years.  It is a lot of fun seeing the different topics that guys have chosen to present on.

So, that is what I’ve been doing for classes.  It is enjoyable, but as always very busy. 

I have been asked by a few people if I have heard anything on the potential transfer to St. Paul Seminary.  I have not.  They told me that they don’t start interviews until May, so I’m not surprised by that.  I am operating under the assumption that I will be transferring.

Peace,

Adam