Educational Project 2017 - Indonesia + Japan

-
Following on from previous trips to Africa and the 2015 project working with pupils of our Brothers' schools in Haiti, this Easter (leaving on Friday) I will be taking two current Yr. 12 students and a former student now in his mid-twenties (Andrew Rowan) on a De La Mennais Brothers Educational Project trip to Indonesia (9 days) and Japan (4 days).

Our objectives are to:
• learn about the lives of people from another culture and learn more about ourselves through shared activities e.g. workshops, dialogue, recreation, sport, music, etc... many summer camp-style activities from primary school children lead by our young people themselves
• open our hearts to respond to the human, spiritual and material needs of others
• change our vision of the world
• develop skills and help others to develop theirs
• learn to look back over our experiences and be able to share them with others.

We will be visiting Brothers' schools, working with their primary school children and others from local orphanages, as well as meeting with older students who will help us to discover the local culture and natural environment. We will also be involved in some English language activities with a group 8 young Indonesian men currently considering a vocation to be a Brother. In both countries we will be looked after by Brothers' communities belonging to my congregation, containing a mixture of nationalities (French, Spanish, Canadian, Indonesian, Japanese and Ugandan).

In Indonesia, we will be staying in Larantuka on the island of Flores in a strongly Catholic area and will be attending the local Easter Triduum celebrations (which apparently involve quite spectacular processions and an outdoor Passion Play) with the Brothers and local parishioners.

I will be posting Facebook + blog articles (including photos) during the trip. Here are some photos of our school and the Brothers in Larantuka to give you a flavour of what we will be encountering.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God You don't need me, but somehow You want me - Tenth Avenue North, “Control”

-
Image
I sent the below message to my teaching colleagues in school this evening, braced as we are for the arrival of “those-who-shall-not-be-named” (i.e. OFSTED, national school inspectors) sometime between now and Easter. For those of you who live outside of Britain their job is to monitor and ensure high standards in all schools… the problem is that they keep moving the goalposts. Anyway, enough of that. Here’s what I said: I think that the attached video teaching is for us right now, to help us not lose sight of who we are and why we are here in a Catholic school. It's too late for the weekend just gone, but try to take on board its message of "wasting time for God" over the coming weeks, despite the pressures that we are all under. Even if you are not a believer yourself, give yourself some time alone with your thoughts, if you can… even just a few minutes.  The video teaching is by one of my favourite bands, Tenth Avenue North, and it accompanies a song of ...
Read more

District 9 - a sci-fi anti-apartheid allegory and the first handheld camera masterpiece?

-
Image
Following on from yesterday's post, here's an interesting article from The Guardian film blog . District 9: Where aliens come to Earth and handheld comes of age District 9, the shock blockbuster produced by Peter Jackson, isn't just notable for its box office dominance and viral marketing campaign. It's also the closest thing to a handheld masterpiece that's yet been made Handheld on handholding … A still from District 9 Lars, time to break out that cigar. When Dogme 95 was brewing, I wonder if von Trier seriously thought his cin-emetic had any chance of influencing pop culture. With the release of sci-fi blockbuster District 9 , we have the answer: the handheld style has finally come of age. The setup - filmed in to-camera interviews with its pencil-neck protagonist, Wikus Van de Merwe, and intrepid Unsteadicam as he enters the extra-terrestrial township - is jarring in the very best way. And traditional complaints of motion sickness, migraine and general inner-ea...
Read more

Transcendent God

-
Over the past few months I have become much more aware of the beauty of the Grail translation of the Psalms that we use in Morning and Evening Prayer (Divine Office) - I will write more about this in the near future - and I am also finding that this has rubbed off on my attitude to the other prayers in the Office. For example, the following hymn that we prayed just over a week ago. The words struck me as if I was discovering them anew, and this after having prayed (or simply recited?) them at least once a month for about 25 years.  The optimism of the imagery struck me most forcefully and I love the idea of God hearing our prayer "before we call", i.e. as the paslmist says elsewhere "before ever a word was on my lips... you knew me through and through" (I paraphrase). See what you think yourselves... Morning Prayer of Sunday, week 3 Transcendent God in whom we live, The Resurrection and the Light, We sing for you a morning hymn To end the si...
Read more