Vocation in Timor? - Saida mak vocasaun?

By our own correspondent

Fatumaca - Timor Leste, 9 October 2020 -- The National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians is at the heart of the large Timor Leste Motherhouse of Fatumaca, quite far from any town or city. But recently thanks to the 'Brother Internet' we can find students from the Fatumaca Don Bosco Technical school in the digital space sharing stories about Fr Locatelli and now we also have some sharing by our novices.

The project emerged as part of the novices' 'Salesianity' class. In the short video (11:27) all fifteen novice share, one by one, bits and pieces of the Christian and Salesian vocation, then the Salesian Mission and Salesian stages of Formation: novices Boris, Pedro, Nelson, Afonso, Silviano, Deomisio, Raineiro, Ventura, Tome, Silvestre, Jeronimo, Guido, Daniel, Francisco and Jeremias. Their Salesianity teacher, Fr. Jolino Vieira, distributed to each one of them one one part of the 'Vocation landscape' - starting with the main vocation within the People of God, followed by the Salesian consecrated vocation of Priests and Brothers, continuing then with the Salesian Mission and different phases of SDB initial formation. Each one of the novices talks about his 'part' in different locations around the beautiful National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians. All 15 novices speak in Tetum, the main dialect of Timor Leste, the first of the two official languages and one of the four most used languages in the country (Tetum, Portuguese, English and Indonesian).

The SDB community at Fatumaca (Rector Fr Savio David) with 17 religious Salesians: 3 Salesian Brothers, 7 practical trainees and 7 Salesian Priests, is entrusted with the National Shrine of MHC, a Senior High School Aspirantate, Novitiate, Primary and Secondary schools, DB Technical School with its large boarding section, a large agricultural farm, Vocation Training Centre, pastoral and social ministry in some 20 chapels in the territory. Large groups of ADMA and Past Pupils of Don Bosco are also animated by the SDBs. In this way the community together with many lay mission partners serves thousands of the Catholic population and hundreds of children and young people in different educational institutions.

We can only congratulate this creative communication of the Fatumaca community and their novices (Novicemaster Fr Anacleto Pires) in sharing their life, vocation and mission with young people. Currently, Facebook is among the most common SNS used by most of the Timorese population including also young people. No wonder, that some Fatumaca National Shrine FB pages have some 9000 followers.

• Vocation video on the FB "Santuario Nacional de Maria Auxiliadora"

Fatumaca FB pages:

• Aspirantate
• Don Bosco Technical School (Center for Professional formation of Br Carlos Gamba (Fatumaca))

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• AustraLasia 5430 (I) Five day communication workshop for 4 Korean novices
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