An enthusiastic contingent of SVD confreres and staff are gearing up for the Mission: One Heart, Many Voices conference in Sydney next month.

Fr Tim Norton SVD is even winging his way home from Nemi, Italy where he now works as Director of Courses at the SVD’s Centro ‘Ad Gentes, to act as co-emcee of the conference and share his perspectives on Mission and Interculturality.

There’s nothing like adversity to bring people together, and the parishioners of Holy Spirit Parish in the Archdiocese of Wellington, New Zealand, know this only too well, having enjoyed the ecumenical hospitality of their Anglican neighbours since their church was damaged by earthquake.

Fr Dom Flores SVD, who spent the first three months of this year working in the parish, says this ecumenical spirit was one of the many highlights of his time in New Zealand.

Lent as a traditional season has always had a positive impact on me, giving blessings in disguise through reconciliation, prayer and fasting. I encountered Lent this year with the same natural and rich instinct brushing aside all the temptations. At times I found it harder than I had thought it would be in a new missionary arena.

Many of us try to be somewhat disciplined for Lent and give up something that we really like and what we think needs eliminating. That’s great! Fasting has always been an important tradition of Lent. This year however, I thought we could also consider other things that we could give up, keeping in mind all the Biblical texts that guide and confront us ...

Papua New Guinea is a country where reliable access to the internet and digital technology is poor or non-existent for most of the population, and that’s partly why the Communications students at Divine Word University in Madang, have taken to their new drone with such enthusiasm.

The drone, which was funded by a donor, and bought in Australia, places the students at the cutting edge of video filming technology and they are already making the most of it.

The tiny indigenous community of Titjikala in Central Australia celebrated recently when two local teenagers returned home from boarding school in Alice Springs to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation.

Fr Bosco Son SVD, parish priest of Santa Teresa Parish, which takes in Titjikala, says the two young women, Shatona Campbell and Marlene Dinnie, were treated as heroines when the community came together to be a part of the Confirmation ceremony.

Nine young men renewed their temporary vows in the Divine Word Missionaries recently – an important step on their journey towards deeper, lifelong commitment to God through the SVD missionary life.

The students, who are studying at the SVD Aus Province’s formation house, Dorish Maru College, in Box Hill, made their renewal of vows on the vigil of the Solemnity of the Annunciation.

Every morning at 5.30am, while most of us are still dreaming, Robert and Bernadette Kobus arrive at the St Arnold Janssen Chapel in Marsfield to open up, prepare things for Mass and spend time in quiet prayer.

They are part of a valued network of lay people who support the Divine Word Missionaries in a wide variety of different ways, and they say they too value the friendship deeply.

I love technology. It’s hard to remember now how I organised myself without the help of my digital diary, which I access on my iPad or phone. Boy, does it make life easy.

These days we hold meetings by video conference to save on airfares. And we are about to step up our communications by offering a refreshed new website and an SVD App.

There is a syndrome which many of us may not have heard of. It is called the shifting baseline syndrome. This syndrome is mostly used to refer to reference points used to measure aspects of ecosystems, for example quality and quantify of fish in a lake.

It was found that as successive generations of scientists studied a particular ecosystem, they often took the baseline as what they were able to measure at the beginning of their contact with that ecosystem. Changes over time were measured against that reference point.

When SVD student Binh Tanh Nguyen first arrived in Thailand from the United States, the first thing he did was take some time to learn the language, culture and customs of the Thai people – even though it was the country of his birth.

“I was born in Thailand in a refugee camp and raised from a wee lad in the US,” he says.