A new SVD missionary has arrived in Australia from Ghana and is looking forward to doing God’s will among the people of the AUS Province.
Fr Gideon Awudi was ordained to the priesthood in August last year and this is his first assignment as a Divine Word Missionary.
“I believe that God has a purpose for bringing me to Australia Province, so it is my hope that at the end of the day, I will find fulfilment as a missionary here,” he says.
Fr Gideon was born in Enchi, the District Capital of Aowin Suaman District in the western region of Ghana and he was raised in New Yakasi, a suburb of Enchi.
His home parish of St Theresa in New Yakasi was an outstation of Mary Immaculate Conception Parish in Enchi, but was elevated to the status of a parish in its own right in 2008.
“I was active in the Church as I was growing up, but I was not close to the priests and seminarians who came there for Masses and communion services respectively, and I was never a Mass Server or an Altar boy,” he says.
“But my parents are Catholics and so I grew up in a Catholic home.”
Fr Gideon says his vocation to the priesthood started in 2005, after high school, thanks to a diocesan priest of Mary Immaculate Conception Parish who visited St Theresa’s and organised youth programs, including indoor games, soccer, and volleyball matches between the parish church and its outstations.
“His love for the youth, his openness to the youth, and his words of encouragement to the youth made me really like him.
“I wanted to be like him, so that I could also work with the youth.”
After sharing his vocational thoughts with the priest and receiving encouragement, he was advised to pray and discern some more before taking the big step towards priesthood.
“Initially I didn’t know that there were missionary priests as well. All I knew was ‘priest’ until I visited my father’s hometown of Vume in Accra Archdiocese where I met some of the SVD priests and brothers.
“In fact, their interactions with me at Maria Gorritte Parish in Battor made me prefer the SVD to diocesan priesthood, because I was treated as one of them, and each time I visited them at the parish I felt comfortable there.
Gideon started attending SVD aspirant meetings in 2007 and in 2008 he applied to join the Divine Word Missionaries and was admitted to the Joseph Freinademetz House of Philosophy in Tamale in the northern region of Ghana to begin his basic formation in 2009.
“Brotherliness and community life drew me to join the SVDs,” he says.
He took his first vows on July 7 2013 and was finally professed on November 16, 2017.
Having arrived in Australia this month, Fr Gideon will spend some time in the SVD’s Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Alice Springs communities to settle in and engage with the Australian culture and language before receiving an assignment in the Province.