Fr. Russ Feldmeier, MM – Maryknoll Affiliate Board

The Korea Affiliates held their monthly meeting on April 7, 2018, at the Maryknoll Sisters’ residence in Seoul. Fifteen members, including two newcomers, spent the afternoon sharing on their personal lives and actions since the last meeting a month ago. Russ Feldmeier attended and presided at Mass.  

The questions below were used as a framework for the sharing:

1. How, as a Maryknoll family, can we better understand the needs of the people we are called to serve?
2. What are essential values needed for a Maryknoll family?
3. What do we need within ourselves to ignite the magic within the Maryknoll family?
4. How does our personal spirituality contribute toward building the Maryknoll family?

They had a wide-ranging discussion. One person talked about the need to listen to the people we serve. He works with youth at Sogang University, a Jesuit University in Seoul, and facilitates pilgrimages and other programs. Others spoke of the value of the Maryknoll family and the way Maryknoll missioners in Korea influenced them. In general, they talked about the value of the Affiliate chapter where we can all meet and which helps us to grow. Since this was right after Easter, they talked about the Paschal Mystery of new life even through suffering.

The hot issue for the day was the #MeToo movement, which has had a powerful impact in Korea recently.  It has been an opportunity for Koreans to deal with the patriarchal aspect of Korean society, and a number of the Affiliates shared on the impact it has been having on their own lives and on the society at large. 

There was a great deal of energy at the meeting, and the sharing was rich.

Bertha Haas – Portland Chapter

A friend asked Bertha, a Maryknoll Lay Missioner in Tanzania for many years, how Tanzanians interpret the Good Samaritan story. Seeing her answer as relevant to all in mission, she shares her thoughts with us.

It is an immense challenge for missioners to respond appropriately to cultures that we don’t fully understand or appreciate. This challenge is acute for short-term missioners but affects all. I was particularly sensitive to the priests who had served in Tanzania for decades but who had derived their understanding of the culture from men.

This question evoked many memories for me. The interpretation that to Tanzanians, “my neighbor is whoever helps me,” rather than “whoever needs help,” is understandable. Colonial experience impressed on Tanzanians the self-image of helplessness, neediness, and dependence on foreigners. Though they spontaneously reach out to each other without even thinking about it, there’s a difference between how Tanzanians relate to each other and how they view themselves in relation to the rest of the world.

My Good Samaritan story: Just after an RCIA class focusing on the Good Samaritan parable, my class and I encountered an old woman passed out in a drunken stupor on the street outside the church. Having just pondered the parable, we couldn’t rightly just pass by. Because everyone else knew the woman and her history, passersby just laughed and went on their way. The Tanzanian catechist offered no solution to the situation. So, several of my young adult students stayed with her while I walked the five blocks to my home to get my car. On my return, the students lifted the lady into my car. I drove to the trail that led up to her home and the students carried her up the steep hill to her home. 

I don’t recall that we discussed this encounter during our next class, but I still distinctly remember the event. Had I not been the class facilitator, I fear I would have joined the passersby and gone on home without intervening. I still worry that by getting my car, I again taught that Tanzanians are dependent on outside help, that they are excused from helping.

What do you think a missioner should do in this situation?

Wherever two or three are gathered...

The Los Angeles Religious Education Congress in Anaheim is a unique annual gathering of 30,000 enthusiastic Catholics, including Maryknollers. Weeks in advance, Hugh Menton, Regional Coordinator for California chapters, invited other Affiliates to join the Los Angeles Maryknoll Affiliates at the Maryknoll booth and have lunch together on Saturday of the Congress.

Tim Moffett and Kathee Bautista from the LA Chapter visited at the booth. The last issue the NSFA reported on their lunch meeting in Los Angeles with Daniel Caño, Mayan Spiritual guide at the 2017 MAC in Guatemala. Kathee updated us that her daughter, Kimberly Bautista, a film maker and activist who has done significant work in Central America and the US, met Daniel at that meeting. When Kimberly recently traveled to Chiapas, Mexico, she and a friend continued to Guatemala and met again with Daniel, this time in his village, further exploring their mutual interest in indigenous spirituality. As we learned at the 2017 MAC, we are all connected, and the impact of our actions can be widespread.

Karen Bortvedt, returned Maryknoll Lay Missioner from Portland, Oregon, who served in Cambodia, was also at the Congress. She talked of her new role as a recruiter for the Maryknoll Lay Missioners, which keeps her on the road. Please contact her (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) if you know of someone who might be interested in joining the Lay Missioners. Carolyn Trumble, a returned Maryknoll Lay Missioner who worked in Brazil, also formerly from Portland, is now based in the California Bay Area as a mission educator for the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers. She encouraged Affiliates to learn more about their Discover Your Neighbor program at: discoveryourneighbor.org.

Ever-enthusiastic Sr. Arlene Trant, MM, asks Affiliates to encourage their local Catholic schools to participate in the Maryknoll Sisters mission education programs. They can contact Sr. Arlene at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Outside the conference hall, we talked with people who were in the rally for the abolition of the death penalty organized by Pax Christi.

Bob Kleeman – Houston Chapter

Bob addresses the Hurricane Harvey floods, ongoing mission trips, and volunteering at Casa Juan Diego. Some Houston Affiliates are doing other mission work, too.

Dick Horstman, Ruth, and I are working with a local parish along with Catholic Charities and the Archdiocesan Mission Council to assist in rebuilding flooded houses near Angleton, south of Houston. So far, the families most in need—the poorest of the poor—have been identified, and the diocese has given us permission to use a six-bedroom house to accommodate incoming mission groups. This house, previously owned by the Basilian Fathers, who have turned their parishes over to the archdiocese, will now be a place for volunteers coming from around the state and country. Eight months later, many houses are still not livable, mostly because the people don’t have the money to buy materials. Catholic Charities has some funds available, and we are working with them to get the money to home owners.

Dick Horstman, a newer Affiliate, is in contact with Louise Zwick, co-founder of Casa Juan Diego* (CJD) with her husband, Mark, who passed away in 2016. He is arranging to have a high school group replace a roof on one of the men’s houses. Louise seems to never change, but she misses Mark very much. She says that he usually made the “big decisions,” so she continually asks him for help to carry on and make the right choices. She has been blessed with some longer-term volunteers and that has helped a lot.

Dick and his parish still go on missions to Eagle Pass, Texas, as are groups from four local Catholic high schools. The high schoolers do a lot of home repairs, including roof replacements. Fr. Gerry Kelly, MM, goes on most of these missions and also on mission trips with the various medical missions to Honduras, south Texas, and Costa Rica.

I volunteer each Wednesday to “run the sandwich route” at Casa Juan Diego. Our parish makes about 75 sandwiches three times a week for delivery to CJD, which are distributed to the migrant workers on street corners waiting for work. Along with those men, we usually find a few groups of homeless people who always welcome a sandwich and fresh fruit and a bottle of water.

^*For more about CJD, see July/August, 2017 NSFA, "If We Had Any Guts, ..."