The newest arrivals in the SVD Australia Province have taken a deep-dive into Australian life, attending the province’s Summer Acculturation Program, which they welcomed as an opportunity to know more about the place and the people and also to grow further as missionaries.
Divine Word Missionary students and newly arrived missionaries in the AUS Province have spent part of their summer taking part in an Acculturation Program to help them adjust to life and ministry in Australia.
Entitled ‘Living and Working in the Multicultural Society of Australia’, the program was held at St Leonards in Victoria and included young students from a diverse cultural background, including Vietnam, Ghana, Ecuador, Mexico, China and Thailand.
An Acculturation Program for recently arrived priests and Religious opened new doors of understanding and acceptance for Fr Kommareddy Rajasekhar Reddy SVD (Fr Raja) and Fr Alfonsus Nahak SVD, bringing an awareness of Australian culture which they say has already had a positive effect on their ministry.
Fr Raja and Fr Alfonsus were part of a broad group of Religious women and men, and diocesan priests who took part in the Winter Acculturation Program at St Joseph’s Centre for Reflective Living, Baulkham Hills, in the Parramatta Diocese.