Loving greetings to you from all of us, the Sisters of Christian Charity, the Residents, Staff and Housemothers of Margaretha Home for the Blind. We thought to send you an update email again to keep you informed of our mission for the blind and also to thank you for all your help extended to us. In thanksgiving, we offered a Mass for you and your loved ones last June 8, and we will continue to do that on every First Sunday of the month.

Days pass by so fast, and the summer vacation of our blind residents is now over. We are in the process of getting them ready to go to school. For this school year, we have six students at our Mother Pauline Learning Center for the Blind, they also work every afternoon in our new “Helping and Healing Hands Workshop”; seven are in Batino Sped Elementary School; one in Quirino High School, and four former Margaretha Home residents are now in College – 3 in Isabela State University and 1 in Asian Pacific College.

Our MHB Summer program this year was geared towards understanding more about our Catholic Faith and Church. We invited speakers from different Church ministries to talk to our blind residents about their functions and why they chose that specific ministry. They were a Eucharistic Minister, Sacristan, Lector & Commentator, Choir Leader, Mother Butler (prepares and cleans items needed for mass), our Parish Priest, and the climax of this program was a visit of our Bishop. Rev. Bishop Honesto Ongtioco came to Margaretha Home and talked to our girls and answered all their questions, celebrated Mass and shared our simple family lunch.

With the help of generous friends and benefactors, the Margaretha Home residents, together with the staff and housemothers were also able to go out as a group. We went swimming and for a pilgrimage, and we even “watched” a movie (first experience of our blind girls). Since the renovated Unit 7 - Workshop area was finished (made possible by the friend readers of Westfalen Blatt, a newspaper in Germany), the blind residents spent most of their afternoons at the workshop. Because we have now 2 bedrooms in this workshop area, we could offer the girls to stay there over night. Always 2 blind residents with a housemother stayed overnight in Unit 7. During this time, the girls were trained to take care of their needs like going to the market, preparing their meals, cleaning their sleeping areas, and how to stay together as a small family. The blessing of this new facility was another special event during this vacation time. In the mornings, everyone enjoyed swimming at the 12-ft. diameter ground top swimming pool, also a gift from the readers of Westfalen Blatt.

Once again, thank you very much for making this summer another enjoyable season for the residents of Margaretha Home and especially for our three new residents (Sharon, Lynette and Maribel) who experienced many things for the first time in their life. We will continue to remember you in our daily prayer and rosary. Please remember us all in yours. Thanks, Maraming Salamat Po and God bless us all!

VERSE I:

CHORUS:

VERSE II:

VERSE III:

They Have Jesus – that is the Title of the book the painter wrote about it

With this painting we want to represent our Philippine Unit and the mission we feel to have in this overpopulated tropical country.

Jesus eats with 12 street children – we cannot count how many of these children we saw already in the streets of Metro Manila. Every day we can see the environment of the poor represented in this painting by the table, the dishes, the cat, the dresses of the children, the dark background, the dirty ground…

Nearly all our girls in Margaretha Home come from this background – also some of our candidates and employees.

In the Philippines the Church wants to be the Church of the Poor, and there are many efforts for it, but there are also many difficulties to go this way, because many influential people in the Church are rich themselves, and often there are more efforts to build beautiful Churches than to reach out to the poor. Very often other Christian groups show more concern than our Church. Therefore we see our Mission in reaching out to the poor and to uplift their situation.

We also realize a very poor knowledge of our faith among the people because of very minimal preparations for the Sacraments. Here is a real need of evangelization – even in this predominantly Catholic country.

Our Eucharistic life-style can empower us. They have Jesus in this painting. We want to bring Jesus to the poor, the blind. We want to be Jesus for them. The painter painted the table of hope – in this difficult time we want to bring hope to the blind, to those who are hopeless and in darkness.

The material with which we decorated the painting is called “Malong,” a local material from the very poor southern islands of the Philippines. It is used to sleep in, to dress and to decorate. It is also used as a shield to dress in public, to get some privacy even in a very populated place.

This Bamboo candleholder we use for the Profession of our Sisters and for the First Communion of our blind girls. Bamboo is a local basic good. It is often used instead of steel and wood. Our Tabernacle is made of it also. Even homes for the poor in the Provinces are often made of Bamboo.

Here the Bamboo holds the light. We want to bring light in its different meanings to our blind girls, to many blind people in the Philippines who are so often abused, neglected, abandoned in terrible ways. But in this overpopulated country there are so many people who have the same experience. Sometimes we feel very powerless, we can only help some of them, but we still can show the presence of Jesus even in this very often so lost world of the poor. Even the Church is very often helpless, and many representatives do not respond in a way we would expect.

If we do not want to get lost in all this misery we have to focus on the experience that we also have Jesus. And we have the support of the Congregation and live our Mission within the Congregation. We cannot save all these poor people, but He will show us where He wants us to show His presence and hope.

The Mission Statement of the SCC Philippine Unit, which we formulated during our Unit Chapter last year, expresses how we – as a small Community of two professed Sisters and a Novice – understand our Mission in the Philippines:

“Our Eucharistic life-style empowers and impels us to be Christ’s light in our “Church of the Poor.” As truly women of Christ-like love, we want to uplift and guide the blind and those who are in need in our wounded world with an undivided, happy heart.”

Sr. Theresia Barkey, Philippines