Below are stories from past issues of Columban Mission magazine. The Columban Fathers publish Columban Mission magazine eight times a year. Subscriptions are available for just $15 per year. Sign up to receive our next issue. Read more about Columban Mission magazine.
Veidrala is located on the Northeast of Vitilevu under the province of Nakorotubu in Ra. It is a 2 ½ hours bus ride from Suva, the capital of Fiji, followed by another 45-minute boat ride to reach Veidrala.
The Village
I first encountered Tien in Tokyo. He had traveled there from Australia, while I had come from Ireland. Both of us were Columban seminarians who had come to Japan in order to study the language and learn about missionary life. Both of us were twenty-seven years old.
Sociologists claim that one of the major problems in much of the world is that nowadays people only listen to, read of and converse with people who think the same as them.
My name is Evangelyn Gawason. My friends call me Vangie. I'm a Subanen. The Subanens are an indigenous people whose ancestral homeland covers most of the mountainous Zamboanga Peninsula in the Philippines.
Audy was a bright-eyed, smiling three-month-old baby who arrived at church for her baptism in the arms of her proud father, Jason. I chatted with him for some moments at the entrance to the church while a large number of relatives and friends of the family arrived.
The Ai Jia Development Center was founded by the Hsinchu Catholic diocese in Taiwan to help and support mentally challenged adult students. Like in many other countries, mentally challenged people in Taiwan are not considered as important.
My only contact with the Columbans before going to the seminary in Suva, Fiji, was when Columban Fr. Frank Hoare visited my home in Tonga to interview me about becoming a Columban missionary priest.
Pope Francis continually reminds us that the Church is missionary and is called to reach out to the poor, to sinners, to unbelievers and to those who live on the margins of modern society.
I met the Columban Fathers for the first time in my hometown, Seoul, during the summer of 1953. Korea was at war then. Amid destruction and the chaos of war, I was trying to leave home for a college in America.
"Abba, call me that," my host father responded when I asked him how I should call him. Abba is the Hindi (Indian) word for father. Sam Daniel would be my third host-father in Fiji. He is Anglican and lives with his wife near their church.
The Columbans are a society of missionaries, including priests and lay people, who minister to people of various cultures as a way of witnessing to the universal love of God.