CARACAS --  Joseph Pham anh Tuan, a young Salesian from Vietnam, and the latest young missionary from that Province, has finally arrived in Caracas. He is the last of this year's missionary group from Vietnam to achieve all the rigamarole of visas, language learning, and finally the 27 hour flight required to get him from HCM to Caracas. Now he plunges straight into Spanish language school, from the Provincial House where he will be resident for some time.
 
There is a particularly nice touch to this arrival, a death-and-new-life touch which the Lord seems to hold amongst his preferences!  Let's hand the word over to Fr Giuseppe Bortoli of VEN, (translated of course!  he wrote in Spanish).

"I arrived yesterday [in Caracas] from Puerto Ayacucho, to be there for the funeral of Fr Hernan Feddema sdb, missionary in the Amazonas, Isla de Raton (Mouse Island), who died on the Feast of the Immaculate. He was 86 when he died. The Vice Provincial contacted the Dutch Mission Office (Fr Feddema was Dutch) and agreed with the family that he should be cremated and the ashes brought to Isla de Raton in accordance with his wishes. The people there, all indigenous tribes, also were happy with this.

Yesterday, when I arrived at Maiquetia Airport for the funeral, the young Vietnamese missionary, Joseph Pham Anh Tuan had just arrived so we went together to Caracas. I thought to myself how wonderful Providence is, that just as one missionary dies, and a great missionary he was, another arrives. Thanks be to God and thanks to the Rector Major for this gift"