Diocese of Tzaneen

4. The OLSH sisters have under Sr Dain Mary (Australian) opened a centre - at the old MSC Heartlands called Ofcolaco. Sister writes: "Dear Adrian, thank you very much for your letter which I have just received and which I am answering immediately. Firstly, I would like to thank you very much for the donation of R8,000 for our project. It is very greatly appreciated as we are still in the initial stages of our project and nothing is very certain yet about funding.

There is an international community of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart at Ofcolaco. There are 6 sisters in the community - from South Africa, Congo, Cameroon, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati and Australia.

We are requesting a chaplain to enable us to have the Eucharist each day as this is at the very heart of our vocation. At the moment the sisters only have the Eucharist once a week at Ofcolaco.

5. A Spanish MSC - 72 year old Fr Ferran Pastor has moved from Guatemala to Dwars River, and is happily learning the language, and running that large parish (17,000 Catholics) - taking the pressure off me. There had been no parish priest for a year. Ferran is a delightful companion: he was superior in Guatemala during the troubles there, burying the 3 MSC killed by rebels; he was in prison, hijacked once and twice condemned to death! No Mickey Mouse! Our MSC community in the North, as we call it is now made up of myself, 2 French, one Spaniard, one Local Black African, 3 Irish and the Bishop.

6. I looked up Fr Russ Anderson MSC down at Cape St Johns in the Transkei last year in October. Russ is having a second year there after many years on Ferguson Island, PNG, and doing great. We had two days there and about 4 days coming and going through Qua Zulu Natal and Transkei. Natal is much like the near North Coast Queensland or North Coast NSW - with sugar and tourism as the predominant industries. It even has its own version of Noosa called St Lucia, with associated dune wilderness drives and such like for the rich!