This month I had the honour and duty to open a new community and church, I don’t think I would ever get that opportunity at home. Most parishes have one or two or three churches, we have 30 communities. 27 have churches, one community we say mass in a shed, another in the big house of a large fazenda / farm and another in a family home. This new community is in existence for about 6 years and very unusually, they built their church before they came looking for the priest to come and visit. The church was about 3 months old by the day we arrived to say the first Mass in it. The community is 60km away on very bad roads, in fact I thought the road had run out a number of times on our way to it. We had only the vaguest directions to it, but thankfully we came across a young lad on a push bike who gave us the directions. The jeep and my driving skills were certainly put to the test on the road to the new community called “Nossa Senhora Aparecida” Our Lady of the Apparition – Patron of Brazil.
Those attending the first mass in the new church of "Nossa Senhora Aparecida" in the Parish of Santo Antonio, Mato Grosso, Brazil.
