Vietnam Mission Celebrates Lunar New Year
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Vietnamese people celebrate the Lunar New Year with a sacred trust. Tet holiday involves days of reunion, hope and luck. After a year of working, it is a time of visiting relatives and friends. The common practice during this time is to spread a message of hope by doing good things and saying good things to those around you. People wish each other good health, good luck and good wealth. Our missionaries have clearly been about this message of hope the last couple of weeks.
I especially admire our candidates in formation who carry out this message of hope and good health to those who are less fortunate. Some of our candidates work in collaboration with Caritas Vietnam in doing charitable work and community development. They do emergency assistance, support in case of disability and disease, migration and educational programs. Our candidates most recently at the beginning of their Tet holiday ministered to the needs of those with disability and disease. We are grateful for the gracious efforts of Tinh Cao, Blir Ntor and Khuong Nguyen.
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Precious Blood Renewal Center honored with Architectural Design Award
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by Elizabeth Heule and Dennis Coday
Precious Blood Renewal Center’s vision is to be a safe and sacred place where transformation is allowed to take place. As we began our process of development and design for the renovation of Stukenborg mission house into the renewal center, this was the guidance given to our architects at Helix Architecture and Design. We are a place of transformation, a place for people who seek to be refreshed spiritually, physically and mentally.
Responding to the design concept Helix Architecture and design created a welcoming and spiritually uplifting building. On a blog posting on its website, Helix explained one aspect of how it translated these feelings to the building design: “A simple yet dramatic twist of the building truss creates a roofline that rises on either side as if greeting those who are visiting the Center.”
This month, the Kansas City Business Journal recognized the Precious Blood Renewal Center with a Capstone Real Estate Award for architectural design. The center was one of 25 projects in nine categories that won a Capstone Award, which honors development and construction projects that transform the Kansas City metro area.
Three other projects of Helix also won Capstone Awards this year. The Capstone Awards reception will be held Tuesday, March 26 at the InterContinental Kansas City to celebrate the winning projects and the teams behind them.
The full list of 2018 Capstone Award winners is on the Kansas City Business Journal’s website. It is an honor for the renewal center to be included in this distinguished list.
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Do Not Be Afraid
by Tim Deveney, Precious Blood Volunteers Director
Suspension bridge on Annapurna Circuit in Nepal
In my mid-20s I lived and worked in Kathmandu, Nepal as a volunteer teacher. During breaks, I had opportunities to travel outside of the Kathmandu Valley and to take in the beauty of the people, cultures, jungles, hills, and mountains of Nepal. On one particular trip outside of Kathmandu, I went on a hike with some friends on a well-traveled trail that wound through a river valley that coursed between two 20,000 plus feet mountains. The scenery is quite breathtaking. At one point in the hike, we came to a suspension bridge that hung over a river at least 100 feet below.
I’ll admit that I have many fears, sometimes paralyzing so. Out of the many fears, I have the greatest of these is unenclosed heights. You can probably imagine that this would be a big problem for someone who has a strong fear of unenclosed heights to cross what looked like an unsteady bridge over raging waters. My choices were to be locked in my fear and be stuck out in the middle of nowhere by not going over the bridge or face this fear to get on with the journey.
As you probably expected I took the latter option since there was little choice in the matter! The adrenaline rush of overcoming this obstacle led to me having one of the most memorable days of my life. I was able to keep up the pace with Nepali mountain people who could walk with massive packs in flip-flops at a much faster clip than most in shape westerners. Facing my fear of heights helped me push through my fear of butchering the Nepali language and gave me the blessing of conversing with some Hindu pilgrims that I was sharing the trail with.
This past Advent and Christmas season I kept hearing the refrain that we should not be afraid. It’s a common refrain in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. In Luke’s Gospel Mary is visited by an angel and told not to be afraid. A chapter later an angel of the Lord stood before shepherds to tell them to not be afraid. In Matthew’s Gospel, an angel appears to Joseph in a dream to tell him to not be afraid to take Mary as his wife, which would spare her embarrassment, provide a father for Jesus, and trust in what God is asking him to do. Similarly, in one of the post-Resurrection narratives, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were greeted by an angel and told to not be afraid.
I understand completely why the individuals in each of these stories would have to be told not to be afraid. An angel appearing to me would be frightening! In each of these stories the people who choose to listen to the angels’ instructions to not be afraid have their own lives and the lives of others enriched and blessed by God’s presence in their midst.
There is a disconnect between the number of times that we hear and read about someone in the Gospel readings being told that they should not be afraid and the fear that is so prevalent in our world that we often succumb to. We are told to be afraid of immigrants, of crime, of losing our livelihoods, of crossing the dividing lines in our communities and relationships. We are afraid of going to the “other side of the tracks,” in Kansas City we are afraid of going to “the other side of Troost,” or in Chicago, we are afraid of going west of the Green Line. Our fears prevent us from seeing God’s beauty and grace as we fail to engage in encountering others as children of God. We must listen to the instruction of God’s messengers to not be afraid and have our lives enriched by our boldness and bravery.
For reflection:
• What are our fears?
• How do these fears keep us from something beautiful and new?
• How do these fears keep us from seeing the presence of God in others?
• What help do I need from others and from God to overcome my fears or the fears of our communities?