10th Anniversary- Fr Denis 

I have been serving as vicar in the parish of St-Michael, Sihanoukville Cambodia, for couple of years already. It is a blessing to be here. I would say that one of my biggest problems is that sometimes I forget the many blessings I'm receiving. Only the fact to be here with these beautiful people, sent by my Church of origin to bear witness to the gospel message and to translate it in today's language is an abundance of grace. To love Christ and to make Him known to other is an amazing blessing that I have received and I believe that is the greatest of all that we have as fellow Christians.

As vicar my prime responsibility is to be at the service of this catholic community with my parish priest and the pastoral team. Here comes my second blessing. I like very much our pastoral team. We are a great team rooted in Jesus Christ. We have our prayer time, our community service time, our recreation time and our reconciliation time, that we need as well. Our local missionary team is also another great blessing. 

Every time I go back in Phnom Penh for a meeting or other reason, it is like I go back home with my family. They are my brothers and sisters and I love them. Maybe I should tell them more often!!!

My third blessing is to live with the Khmer people. It is very enriching for me to live among them in the parish. We have a family and many youths staying with us inside the church compound. They are very relational and smiling folks. They are respectful and polite as well. They use a lot the body language to express themselves and to know better the other one. They often use the silence as an answer to hostility which is very good most of the time... but not all the time. I learn a lot to calm down and to think twice before speaking when tension arises.

Mother Teresa used to say that one of the most important things in our life time is to do the small things with great love. My fourth blessing is that these Cambodian people are showing me to search for quality of time before doing things around. To learn the ''being with'' is awesome. Because of their Buddhist tradition and their difficult past experience with the genocide, these people know the importance of living the very present moment. It is a long process for me to let go about security of the future and to live more the very present with my limits and poverty in search for an actual harmony with everyone and everything around me. 

The verb ''to do'' gives me a feeling of being a good missionary, but the verb ''to be'' help me to understand my real mission in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ to answer more and more to the Father's will, a life term commitment.
There are many other blessings that I could write about and that I'm so great full to God. May our Lord help us to discover more and more the many blessings we receive day after day.
Fr. Denis Carrier (Last article written for our Newsletter, August 2013)