The joy of moving towards…
By early 2020, following lockdowns imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of ZOOM increased sharply and thousands of businesses and educational institutions had switched to online courses using ZOOM. As the company offered its services free of charge to schools from kindergarten to high school in many countries, the number of users per day increased from 10 million in December 2019 to 200 million in March 2020, with many new participants working online for the first time. ZOOM has also become a social platform and its users have organized family reunions, sports classes, concerts, weddings, etc. Our congregation quickly adopted this new medium of communication. At first with some difficulty but very quickly, and with a lot of practice on the spot, several sisters became very skilled in the use, and ZOOM became the means of bonding between individuals and communities. What a pleasure to connect between Europe, America and Africa to…
Beginning of a transformation at Kinteko
Sr Leocadie Kana, Msola community of Butare (Rwanda) Kinteko, a subparish of the cathedral, is not far from our Butare community. Despite being close to the town, its population is very peripheral, with plenty of unemployed young people and many young single mothers. They are known to be very difficult and very poor materially, humanly and spiritually. Material poverty adds a heavy burden to the difficulties of family life which sometimes becomes hell. The first victims, the children, desert the family home while very young to live adventures in the city, turn to drugs , become criminals and an easy prey of human traffickers. The population of Kinteko is somehow left to itself. No religious was working in that area. Touched by this reality, our community reflected about it, and we decided to do something with the women and young people. Sr Leocadie meets the women and young people in Kinteko..…
Bringing Polish children to love Africa
In 2019, in the celebrations for the 150 years jubilee of our congregations, the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa – White Sisters and the Missionaries of Africa – White Fathers, we organised an exhibition at the Youth Cultural Center in Lublin, Poland.
CHILDREN’S PILGRIMAGE TO WORLDHOUSE
On February 17th 2020 several school classes visited the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa in the Worldhouse in Boxtel, Netherlands.
The tree planting project in Nouakchott
Yahya with the Children of the Sun learning about plants. July 11 was the launch of tree planting by the Islamic-Christian group (ICG), in collaboration with the Association ‘Children of the Sun’ in the suburbs of Arafat. Sr.Celina, who is the initiator of the « One tree per family » project, is also the head of the Islamic-Christian group. On the first day of the tree planting, Sr Celina with Victorine, Fr Victor the chaplain of the group, Sr.Marie Jesus, Daughter of Charity, four other members and a young Christian man joined the ‘Children of the Sun’ group to participate in the work of land preparation. They dug holes one meter deep and one meter in diameter. Then the holes were half filled with sand and manure. The first day they dug 8 holes because it was more difficult than expected. We had to organize ourselves for the work that everyone was doing for…
The children on/off the streets looking towards the future with hope
What is Tikondane?
Tikondane is the project of Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa in Lilongwe, Malawi, that works with and for the children on/off the streets. We work with close to 700 children per year of which more than 400 are newcomers on the streets.
The Crib, more than ever meaningful
A little paper, a little clay to model the characters… Nothing more modest than a crib made with love and patience! However, the memory of this birth is not insignificant. Christmas is always full of meaning. A cave their only shelter! Is it not like to day? At the sharpest time of winter, some people have only one cardboard as a mattress and another as a quilt. They hardly have time to put up a tent when already they have to leave their makeshift shelter and go elsewhere. This cave in its depth, allows us to see these families today, unable to pay their rent, their electricity bills. And we can continue the parallel with Mary and Joseph. They were forced to exile to Egypt, to save the life of Jesus. Today thousands of people are urgently forced to flee their country to escape death. …
Uganda: Our Sisters’ dreams come true
For here the Proverb holds true: “One sows, another reaps” (Jn. 4.17). How true this Scripture text is we could witness in Kisubi on the 1st of October when participating in the Centenary Celebrations of St. Theresa’s Girls’ School founded by our Sisters in the year 1915. This celebration came shortly after another celebration on the 27th August when we were invited to join the feast in Lubaga in honor of 60 years existence of St Michael Lubaga Hospital Training Schools established in 1956 with the support of our Sisters. The hospital was one of our first foundations in Uganda. Both institutions are two of our Sisters’ dreams come true. Our Sister’ dreams: The first dream was that many Ugandans might have access to good health care services, and today we can rejoice seeing so many young people well trained, nursing and caring for the sick and at the…
Sister Madeleine Allain and her passion for the study of language Kabyle
Sister Madeleine Allain She was a friend of Algeria who left there after having given much to the culture, especially the Berber language. She not only studied the language, but developed a Kabyle-French dictionary which was published in1982 by the SELAF Editions in Paris. The study of language Kabyle Sister Madeleine Allain arrived in 1939 in Algeria as a “White Sister” with her religious name: Sister Louis de Vincennes. From that date, she began with passion and method to study the Kabyle language in Ain El Hammam (Michelet) and Tizi-Ouzou. In 1953 she founded in Tizi-Ouzou a house of studies for young sisters (Center for Feminine Berber studies). The center later moved to Larbâa Nath Iraten (Fort National). In 1946 she helped found the FDB (Berber documentation file) that was set up with Fathers Dallet and Lanfry to collect Berber texts. In 1947 Sister Madeleine obtained…