I (Fr. Binu) just finished visiting our missions in Chad. The facilities there are very minimum. Of course no electricity, WiFi, or any such things. Very poor living conditions, lot of illnesses, and poverty. Most people have one meal a day. Very little or no education. Many children and others die due to lack of basic facilities. My community runs two missions there with parishes, schools, boarding for children, and other ministries to help people. The parishes have many substations. Since there are no proper roads, it’s difficult for our fathers to get to all of them.
They have no church and so mass is in the open air, under the trees. Mass is in French and their local language. Each tribe has its own language. On last Sunday I preached in English, and it was translated into French and Gambai, the local language. So we had three homilies! The celebrations are very lively. Mass lasts for at least two hours.
As of now there are only adult baptisms and there are many who are willing to go through the catechetical training. We plan to extend our missions there but due to lack of personnel and resources, it’s hard. All our fathers are often down with Malaria and other illnesses. For most of the major shopping they have to come to some towns in Cameroon, and that’s 600 or more kilometers. Tonight I’m at one of our seminaries in Cameroon. There are 30 or so seminarians here. There are many vocations but due to limited finance and facilities we take only ten or fifteen candidates every year.”