Building the future together
The Formators Course started on the 3rd August at Nairobi, Kenya. It has been organised by the General Council?s Religious Life Commission. It will last eleven months, from August 2005 until May 2006. It is being held at Subiaco Centre, a house of hospitality of the Benedictine Missionary Sisters. We count on the precious collaboration of the large community at MIC (Marist formation Centre for Africa) which is not far from us. In June 2006, the group will visit the Hermitage in France to spend its last month of the course close to the source of our Institute.
The course has been envisaged and prepared carefully aiming to offer a group of brothers a practical, participative and community formation, adapted to the work of initial Marist formation of our time. The fact of having one programme for all the regions of the Institute aims to profit from the richness of an international and multicultural experience in a Marist ambiance.
The team directing the course is formed by Brothers Enrique Escobar (Mexico), co-ordinator, Antoine Kazindu (Rwanda) and Barry Burns (New Zealand).
There are seventeen participants of whom five are from the African continent: Norbert Mwila (Zambia), Mark Anokwuru (Nigeria), Protais Rusanganwa (Rwanda), Simeon Herrings D.S.Banda (Malawi) and Jean-Joseph Rakotonindrina (Madagascar), four from Asia: John Tan Wee Eng (Malaysia), Paul Samuel Bhatti (Pakistan), Roshan Silva (Sri Lanka) and Lindley Sionosa (Philippines), three from Oceania: Afaese Afaese (Samoa), Stanley Bakere and Simon Serero (Papua new Guinea) and five from the American continent: Luis Felipe González Ruiz and Juan JosĂ© RamĂrez Oliva (Mexico), Walter Frisnel (Haiti), Helder de Souza Silva Pinto (Brazil) and Pablo Roberto Sánchez (Argentina).
During the opening celebration on the 3rd August, we were blessed by the presence of Brothers Antonio Ramalho, General Councillor and co-ordinator of the Religious Life Commission, Eugène Kabanguka, Provincial of Afrique Centre-Est/East Central Africa, Spiridion Ndanga, Superior of MIC, and a group of young scholastic brothers who assured the animation with musical instruments and African songs.