Wednesday, July 22, 2009

PNG at Last

After the "perfect storm" of exigencies and snafus I got may passport from a Fedex facilitiy in Ronkonkoma NY at 8:30 a.m. Monday morning. It was then pell mell back to Little Portion and I caught the 10:10 train to New York City. The call of the open skies. Nearly 23 hours of flying time plus a six hour lay over in Hong Kong later. I arribved in Port Moresby, Papua New GuineaNever have I been so glad to get somewhere. I even enjoyed the two hour delay in the Immigration line at the airport as they sifted through every article in the luggage of a plane load of Chinese business men who flew from Hong Kong with me.
The water at the St. Francis School has been turned off since the school admoinistration didn't pay the bill. So the brothers are without water too. With 6 guests from overseas they have bunked us in very pleasant quarters not far away--but with lots of water. Today we are being given the "grand tour" or Port Moresby, then tomorrow we fly over to Popondetta for the Big Weekend. The Society of St. Francis is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the arrival of the first SSF brothers in the Pacific Region. From those early days the Holy Spirit has called many men to test their vocations, and today there are three separate provinces in the Pacific, with over a 100 brothers among them. We have much to celebrate.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Glad to know you finally made it there safely.
Didn't know if you had seen this great article about the 6 Franciscan friars (Catholic) walking through Virginia. It appeared in the Washington Post the end of July but was just in the Everett Herald this weekend.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/07/28/ST2009072803246.html?sid=ST2009072803246

Linda Emerson