(ANS - San Benito) - The feast of Don Bosco was celebrated in style at the Salesian mission of San Benito. In addition to the traditional religious services, there was also a city marathon, and in recent weeks other new projects were started. Fr Giampiero de Nardi gives an update on the various activities of the mission:

We are selecting candidates for new scholarships. This year the number has increased considerably: thirty-eight for children and five for mothers. We are gradually increasing the number, trying to meet the needs of the local people. However, the number of requests always exceeds the number of scholarships we can give.

In addition, there is a lot of painstaking work behind the scene, checking that the scholarships go to those who really need them most, but fortunately I have good employees. The scholarship is very useful, because it forces parents to make their children study, because if they do not achieve good grades, they lose the scholarship.

Another project that is taking shape is that of meals for the children. We started with one meal a day, sort of half way between breakfast and lunch. We hope soon to give a second meal, and eventually a third. For many of these children it may be the only meal they will have in the day.

We have also resumed formation programmes for the people in charge of small missionary communities. The Latin American region has chosen to promote evangelization through small communities of believers who know each other and get together, sharing the word of God, celebrating their faith, helping each other and trying to live their commitment to build the kingdom of God. At the present time we have about thirty communities in the parish.

On 31 January we celebrated Don Bosco. We started singing at five in the morning and in the evening we held a procession and celebrated Mass in his honour.

We continued the festivities on Sunday 1 February. We organized a marathon for young and old. The idea was to have an activity that would have some impact on the whole of San Benito. A lot of people participated. Some say it was the highest participation of any marathon in San Benito, at least in the past five years.

 Published 10/02/2015