National Project for 2022 For 2022, the funds we raised went to the Missionaries of God’s Love (MGL) for the benefit of the following initiatives:
MGL Manila Mission – to provide relief to poor families in the form of:
feeding programs through their community pantries
providing school supplies for their scholars
MGL Australia – various opportunities, such as:
Sponsoring a seminarian
MGL (www.mglpriestsandbrothers.org) is a fairly new Catholic congregation established in Canberra by Fr Ken Barker in 1986. MGL is “dedicated to bringing the Good News of God’s love to those who do not yet know His love.” They are “especially focused on young people and the poor.” The MGL community understands that their “commitment to contemplative prayer, adoration of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and charismatic worship, were meant to empower them to bring God’s love to others, especially to the alienated and marginalised in society.”
Updates from Ric Manalac (LIA National Director) National Raffle 2022 We had our National Raffle draw at the CFCA National Conference in Melbourne in April. We sold 7,781 of a possible 10,000 raffle tickets. The net proceeds from the national raffle was $30,492.27. LIA is in awe of the generosity of everyone who supported this cause, and we pray that the Lord blesses you more. We gave away 25 consolation prizes of $50 each and 10 major prizes of $300 each. These were in the form of gift or prepaid cards. We had one grand prize winner of $3,000. Everyone was surprised, including the winner himself, when the name drawn was our very own CFCA National Director, bro Edwin Aguirre. Bro Edwin graciously and generously donated his prize back to LIA for a project in his hometown of Bohol to help build homes for those affected by a typhoon. We honour Bro Edwin for his great generosity.
Meeting Fr Ken Barker MGL Fr Ken Barker MGL with Ric & GloriousMy wife, Glorious, and I had a meeting with Fr Ken Barker earlier this year when he visited Brisbane for the launch of his new book. The meeting was meant to discuss the details of our partnership with MGL for our 2022 LIA National Project. Scheduling the meeting was highly unlikely as
Fr Ken had a full schedule and so did Glorious and I. Somehow the Lord made a way and we understood this better after the meeting. I would like to take this opportunity to share this brief moment with Fr Ken as it was a powerful testimony of the Holy Spirit being at work. Without hearing any details from us, Fr Ken started with expressing gratitude that LIA chose MGL to be the beneficiary of this year’s national project. He shared to us their regular struggles that their young congregation experience in sustaining the cost of
sending their seminarians to university. Fr Ken told us that he had been praying for the Lord’s providence as the university fees were due soon and he knew they did not have enough funds to cover them. Then here comes LIA and he felt that the Lord has answered his prayers through our community. Glorious and I came to that meeting prepared to propose that we split the proceeds into three: MGL Manila, MGL Seminarians and MGL Darwin (for indigenous and prison ministries). After hearing Fr Ken’s sharing, we asked him where their greatest need was at that time. Fr Ken said their Manila Mission had a lot of regular donors and their Darwin Mission receives sufficient support and assistance from the Diocese. Their greatest need at that time was in sustaining their Seminarians program. Together with the QLD LIA team, we prayed for the Holy Spirit to help us discern and we came up with a split that seemed reasonable and Spirit-led. LIA pledged $25,400 to the Seminarians program and the remaining $5,092.27 to MGL Manila. The exchange rate favours us with this split as $5k is equivalent to almost PHP200k, which we all agreed can still go a long way in Manila. These donations have now been made to MGL Australia and MGL Manila. Fr Ken sends his prayers to CFCA and all our works. He asked that CFCA members in Melbourne consider visiting the seminarians there as their other need right now is companionship and fellowship. The priests and seminarians cannot accept donations in cash or in kind as they have a vow of poverty, but they will appreciate the visit to help with homesickness.
Updates from the MGL Manila Mission Fr Ken Barker sent us some photos of their Community Pantries that feed the poorest of the poor at their Manila Mission at St Benedict Parish. They regularly run a 9-week feeding program for underweight children aged 2 - 12 years old. MGL seeks the help of the parents of these children in helping cook, prepare and distribute the food. MGL Manila is also very active in the formation of the youth in their mission areas. Some photos below show the participants of their Life in the Spirit Seminars for teenagers.
2020 - 2021
In the past 2 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has been at the forefront of everyone’s mind. The CFCA community in Australia, through its Chapters, responded with initiatives in response to the impacts of COVID-19 to various sectors of our society. LIA coordinated a national effort to provide relief and assistance to those affected by COVID-19 through a project called “CFCA CARES: We’re all in this together”.
In Australia, we have responded to different bushfire appeals for help specially in December of 2019 during the catastrophic wildfire season, forged a partnership with the St Vincent de Paul, Blacktown in providing help to the most marginalised members of our community, supported refugee appeals for help through the Parish (Good Shepherd) Refugee Program, supported a feeding program in Queensland through the initiative of a Capuchin priest, helped many International students badly affected by the Covid 19 pandemic and many more projects Australia wide.
In the Philippines, we have conducted several Medical Missions starting July 2018 in some of the most remote areas that have never ever been visited by any medical practitioners in places like Alegria, Cebu, Sorsogon and Saranggani in General Santos City. We have partnered with Fr. Jerry Orbos of the SVD, in supporting his charity initiatives through the Sacred Heart Parish in Kamuning, Quezon City in providing meals and grocery items to more than 100 very poor families on a weekly basis and also through the Fr Jansen Center in Tayuman, Sta Cruz, Manila with almost the same charity works. We have supported several and many appeals for help specially when the Philippines was hit by successive destructive typhoons in 2018 and 2019. We have extended help to such big charitable organisations like the Lacura Vincula Foundation in Palawan, the Hospicio de San Jose in Manila, Project Purok Barba in Bukidnon, Munting Tahanan Foundation in Mabalacat, Pampanga, cash donations to a housing Project in Bicol and many other projects in the different parts of the Philippines.
For the year ending 2020, the WWP was able to fund 26 Australian projects and 46 overseas costing about $88 000.00. We sourced our funds from different fund-raising campaigns like raffle ticket sales, sports tournaments like golf and bowling, dinner parties, garage sales and from donations of individual and corporate benefactors.
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