By Kuching Carmel
KUCHING — Mother Margaret and Sr Evelyn from Kuching Carmel left their monastery at 4.30 am in the early morning of 12 August 2023, to travel to Manila-Bacolod for their Carmelite Federation Formators course. The course lasted five days (14–18 August).
Kuching Carmel joined the OCD Philippine Federation in 2019.
The speaker was Mdm Pure Ordona, a Philippine OCDS who is a psychologist with her own clinic.
There were 24 representatives (23 Philippine Carmels + Kuching Carmel) attending the formators course which comprise four-levels of courses with the present course being the first level and the rest to be organised within the next few years.
The first focus was on, “Formator is a call from God… discernment, self-knowledge and to equip the Formators”.
It also touched on the main points of how to form a candidate, the basic requirement and criteria to be met in a formandee before a candidate is recruited. This will launch into a deeper level of human psychology and spiritual dimension, which stresses the healing of a human person is necessary, for a solid ground of maturing before the demanding task of becoming a religious.
Besides the workshops, the whole group also travelled by land and ferry to visit Bacolod Carmel and Jaro Carmel (the first Carmelite foundation in Philippines) which will be celebrating their 100th centenary in November 2023. They also visited Our Lady Hill, OCD Friar in Bacolod.
The two Kuching Sisters were filled with joy and thrilled to visit the altar-bread office in Bacolod and Jaro. Bacolod has a higher, more efficient and modern automatic baker machine—seven (7) bakes with four (4) fully automatic mixing and baking machines from Italy.
They also brought back some altar breads as samples and more information for a West Malaysian priest… for future orders and deliveries.
