austraLasia 1503

When PNG's first Cooperator unit says it is 'recruiting' you'd better believe it!
(Last of the 'toward #1500' entries.  Winner to be announced this weekend...appropriate for 'annunciation' weekend!)

PORT MORESBY: 25th March 2006 -- PNG's first Cooperator Unit, now well established since its tentative beginnings in 1998, is out recruiting, and has 15 new candidates who have begun their first formation.  PNG's first Cooperator Unit is possibly a unique unit in the ASC world - until now it has been entirely made up of military men and their wives, is located at Murray Barracks in the NCD and has a Lt. Colonel as its Coordinator.  'Recruiting' for the 'unit' is second-nature for a group like this!  The members have long learned, however, to see their training for what it has to offer, and to adapt it when their Salesian training suggests otherwise.  Fr. Alfred Maravilla, who was at that time the Rector of the Don Bosco Tech in Gabutu, gently guided them through those first trials, and one of them, writing some time back for the Salesian Bulletin, acknowledged the situation when he said: "Perhaps I should begin by sharing what it was like NOT to be a Salesian Cooperator" and then went on to say that "as a military person it is like going from one extreme to the opposite.  I used discipline my children as if they were servicemen....the result was always negative.  My search for a better way to raise my children landed me at the feet of St. John Bosco, or should I say, at the foot of the 'answer'. Thank you St. John Bosco...".
    The first Unit has led not only to their own successful recruiting drive (amongst non-military types).  It has led to the growth of the Salesian Family in other ways and other areas.  Simbu, up in the Highlands, has been forming their first unit for the past two years and expect the first promises in November. This group too stands out - it is made up of eight young professional teachers all from the Don Bosco school.  Noises are being made in Vunabosco by an ex-Salesian teaching there, who wishes to see a unit start as soon as possible.
    Not only ASC but ADMA.  Gabutu has an ADMA group too.  Formation is a little less rigorous for ADMA. There's a good chance of swifter development of other groups along these lines.
    Fr Alfred is no longer at Gabutu.  Not hard to guess where he might be, with the news of a new ASC Unit starting up in Simbu.

GLOSSARY
ASC: Association of Salesian Cooperators
NCD: National Capital District... includes Port Moresby and most of the south eastern coastal region (that long 'tail' of New Guinea Island).
ADMA: Clients of Mary Help of Christians.  Tricky one this.  The Italian is Associazione Devoti Maria Ausiliatrice.  They were founded by Don Bosco and are based on Turin. 'Devotees' never got the nod in English and we ended up with 'clients' which in my book is worse.  I note that people often reduce it in practice, in English, to 'Association of Mary Help of Christians'.  Makes more sense.
________________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific.  It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome.  For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml