Africa is a large continent, very cultural and dynamic. The Church is growing and there is a great future of the Catholic Church in Africa. The Church is also one and we can all contribute to stimulate this growth by our own prayers and contributions. I joined the Society of African Mission (SMA) because of their missionary charisms. SMA was founded to respond to missionary need to the most abandoned in the society especially in Africa. We strive to go to areas found to be too difficult to survive. We go to the interior of Africa, the villages and bush and anywhere where the most needy are found. Though it is a difficult mission, we draw our strength from the different pool of people who are there praying and supporting us morally and by their material contribution.
As I thank you for your generosity in the past, I humbly continue to appeal to your generosity to help us to put smiles on the faces of people. Your contribution will help to train SMA seminarians. In Africa, we have young people who are willing to be missionaries but do not have the means to support their seminary expenses. Your contributions will help our projects in remote villages, like building and running of churches, hospitals and schools. In these places, missionaries become the only hope of people when faced with hunger, sicknesses or the need to be educated. Your contribution will also give food and drink to people through our St. Vincent de Paul group, and it will empower and give future to children, women and youth, and help to sustain the Priests on mission.
Where I work, our churches and outstations are far apart, and it becomes difficult to go say Mass or visit the needy and sick in emergencies with the car we have at the moment, which keeps breaking down and requires constant pushing before it will start. This is not due to lack of maintenance, but because it is very, very old and would have long been replaced if the means were there. Please, I beg for your help towards getting a better mission car that will help us to be more efficient in our work. As the phrase goes, “some go to mission by giving something, some give to mission by going themselves.” In either way, we are all missionaries. May the Lord bless your generosity.
FR. EMMANUEL DIM, SMA
This Saturday, August 15 is the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Since the feast falls on a Saturday in 2015, the holy day of obligation is abrogated and therefore not a holy day of obligation. Mass will be celebrated on August 15 at 7am and 5pm.
My name is Emmanuel Chineye Dim and I am from Imo State in Nigeria. I hail from a family of 13; nine children of eight boys and one girl but at present my parents have gone to meet the Lord including my eldest brother, all in 2008. I grew up in a lovely Catholic family just opposite the cathedral of my home diocese of Orlu in Imo State. This family experience helped me to have a good appreciation of the Catholic faith. I had the desire to become a priest when I was an altar server and I prayed and wished, if it was the will of God, to totally devote my life to him as a priest.
