Apr 15, 2025
Our friends at the Holy Family Care Centre in the Limpopo Province of South Africa have been in touch with an update from the centre, where new solar panels have been installed thanks to the support of our mission friends and benefactors here in the Irish Province. The centre is run by the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, and here, they provide dedicated care for orphans, and sick and vulnerable children, with approximately 75 children in residence at any given time.
In our 2024 World Projects Appeal, we asked if you could help to raise €9,900 for the centre to install solar panels. Due to “load shedding”, it is an unfortunate fact that the centre’s electricity is frequently cut, and the emergency generator is expensive to run. The solar panels will power the unit’s bore water well and sewerage pumps, ensuring savings on power and the prevention of major system failure with when the electricity cuts out.
The solar panels have now been successfully installed, and the community at Holy Family are already reaping the benefits of having a dependable and sustainable source of power for the centre. As ever, we join our voices with our OLSH Sisters in thanking our mission family sincerely for your continued friendship and support, which makes such a great difference to the Holy Family children.
HELP SUPPORT OUR MSC MISSIONS PROJECTS
Feb 11, 2025
OLSH Global Outreach
MSCs from all over the world continue to work in partnership with the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (OLSH), providing help and support to the poor and vulnerable on our shared mission: “May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be everywhere loved.”
OLSH outreach in Brazil
The Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart are active in their ministry in several areas across Brazil, from educating young children to caring for the poor, the hungry, and the elderly. This year, they’re appealing for our help in funding a number of different projects that will continue to change lives for the better in regions of real and pressing need.
Sr Maria José Ferreira writes from Capanema, in the south of Brazil. The local community are currently working together to build a new chapel for the area, which is now almost complete. The community here need a sound system for their new chapel, to benefit their prayer and celebration. “We have celebrations there already, and we have a children’s choir also,” writes Sr Maria José. “It is a dynamic community. I believe this chapel will help many people to grow in faith.”
€2,000 will pay for a sound system in the new chapel, giving the community of Capanema
a place to gather in faith and love.
Sr Maria José is also raising funds to provide food parcels for very poor families in the local area of Capanema. “My apostolate is to visit families around the parish area,” she writes. “I have met many people, and I pray with them. It is so sad to see people living difficult financial times. Some do not have enough to eat. I would like to help them, and I am asking for money to buy them some food bags. I am aware this will not solve all the social problems that I see but it will give them a relief for some months.”
A total of €2,000 will help Sr Maria José to provide essential food parcels
for hungry families in the coming months.
The Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart run a school in Rio de Janeiro, where the children get great enjoyment and benefit from their study and practise of musical skills. The school has a music classroom dedicated to these studies, and the Sisters here are working to raise funds to buy new instruments for the children and extend their current collection.
€2,000 will help OLSH Sisters in Rio de Janeiro to buy new musical instruments
for the children in their school, empowering and encouraging
them to learn new skills and foster creativity.
OLSH Sisters in Brazil also write of the importance of play in the development of the children in their care at their Rio de Janeiro school. “We believe children learn a lot when they are playing,” they write. “It is important to give them toys and objects that can help them to develop skills.” The Sisters have an area dedicated to play in their school, for children aged between 2 and 10 years of age, and they need to purchase new toys and educational games to assist in the children’s development.
€2,000 will buy a selection of educational toys and games
to help the children learn and grow through play.
PLEASE SUPPORT OUR OLSH SISTERS IN THEIR GLOBAL OUTREACH
OLSH ministry across Africa
The Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart have been ministering across two dioceses in Burkina Faso for several years, and are now working to set up ministry in a third diocese, with enthusiastic and motivated young women requesting to join the Congregation. The OLSH Sisters involved in the formation programme for these young women are looking to transfer the Postulate from Zagtouli to Siogo, Tampoussimdi, which is a calm and peaceful place conducive to formation. The Sisters are now working to raise funds to build two new dormitories for the Postulate in a village not far from Ouagadougou, where there is plenty of space for the formation programme, and also scope for gardening and care of livestock in the surrounding fields.
A total of €10,000 will fund two new dormitories for these young women
working together in the love of Christ.
The Holy Family Care Centre is a residential care facility for children located in Ofcolaco, South Africa. Currently home to 75 abandoned and chronically ill children, Holy Family provides a loving, nurturing environment for children with critical medical needs, who have nowhere else to turn. The centre has a nursery which accommodates up to eight babies, plus four dormitories, two dedicated to older boys and girls, and two for boys and girls aged 2 to 10. The younger children, toddlers and preschoolers aged between 2 and 5 years, also sleep here, but are often overwhelmed by sharing the space with the older children in the group. The OLSH Sisters who take care of the crèche children feel that they would be better cared for if they had their own smaller space in a dedicated dormitory, which would reduce the noise and overstimulation at bedtime.
The Holy Family team need €20,000 to fund the toddlers’ area,
which will accommodate beds for up to 20 children and two staff members,
with space for winding down and quiet play.
The Jules Chevalier Health Centre was set up in December 2020 in the village of Maka Kahone in Senegal, working with the Ministry of Health to promote accessible healthcare for all, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity. The centre offers a range of treatments to the people of Maka Kahone and surrounding villages, and its facilities are in great demand, as it is recognised for its high levels of care for patients. The health centre is now working to set up a laboratory with specific equipment, and staffed by trained personnel, in order to best manage the diagnoses of contagious diseases, maternity care, the care of young babies and children, predominant problems such as diabetes and high blood pressure, and further issues.
OLSH Sisters need €12,000 to purchase the necessary equipment for the new laboratory,
including a microscope, a centrifuge, micropipettes, a rotator, and other essential items.
The Jules Chevalier Health Centre in Mbandaka, Congo, has recently been extended, and is in need of new equipment to fill the new facility. Fundraising is underway to meet the centre’s current goals, including purchasing new medical equipment, reducing the maternal and infant mortality rate in Mdandaka and its surrounds, and improving the conditions of care for patients and the working conditions of staff at the centre.
The equipment required includes 10 beds, a consultation table, a medical stepladder,
10 bedside tables, a small surgery box, a delivery box, baby scales,
and other items, at a cost of €10,000.
CAN YOU HELP OUR OLSH SISTERS IN AFRICA?
With ongoing mission projects in education, childcare, agriculture, and healthcare, OLSH ministry is touching and transforming lives across Africa.
“We are very grateful for all that you are and do for us. On behalf of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, I thank all those who pay special attention to our projects.”
~ Sr Marie-Laure Lankoandé FNDSC, Regional Superior of Burkina Faso
PLEASE SUPPORT OUR OLSH SISTERS IN THEIR GLOBAL OUTREACH
Jan 16, 2025
What a wonderful way to begin the new year, with a very welcome update from our friends at the Holy Family Care Centre!
The Holy Family Care Centre is located in Ofcolaco, in the Limpopo Province of South Africa, where it provides residential care for up to 80 orphans, and sick and vulnerable children. Many of these children are living with chronic illnesses such as HIV/AIDs, TB, and other critical conditions. The children are mostly orphaned, and all are extremely vulnerable, so the Holy Family centre truly is a life-saving refuge for them. We at home in the Irish Province have long enjoyed an enduring friendship with Sr Sally and the Holy Family team, and our mission friends and extended Sacred Heart family here at home have provided invaluable support to the OLSH Sisters in Ofcolaco throughout the years.
Back at the beginning of 2024, we asked our mission friends here at home to help the Holy Family community to raise funds to improve the dormitory facilities at the centre, and to build a new toilet block for the toddlers and younger children in their care.
Prior to this, the boys’ dormitory was home to 23 children and two staff members, with beds packed together side-by-side to fit everybody in. The Sisters were hoping to replace the 15-year-old bedding, and buy sets of bunk beds to create more space in the dormitory. Thanks to the generosity of our mission friends here in the Irish Province, the dormitory renovation has been a success, and the boys now have a far more comfortable space for rest.
The Sisters also wished to raise funds to build a toilet block for the 25 younger children in the crèche facility, with smaller, junior-sized toilets to help the toddlers with toilet training. The new toilet block has now been constructed, and is a great success with the younger members of the Holy Family community!
“Most sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to the 2024 World Projects Appeal,” writes Sr Jenny Christie FDNSC, International Development Officer for the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. “What a difference your support has made!”
We join Sr Jenny in thanking you, wholeheartedly, for your continued friendship and support, and we wish all at Holy Family a very happy, healthy, and peaceful 2025!
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Oct 24, 2024
October 21st marked the 117th anniversary of the death of our founder, Fr Jules Chevalier MSC. Each year on this day, we pray especially for the man who planted the roots of our foundation from humble beginnings, sparking a charism and a mission that we still share over a century later, as our extended Sacred Heart family continues to minister in over 50 countries across the world.
Representatives from several of the Chevalier communities gathered in Rome to pray for Fr Chevalier in the run up to his anniversary, the Chevalier Family in the Philippines also commemorated the day “celebrating the life and mission Jules Chevalier bequeathed to us”, MSCs in the Province of the Pacific Islands “gathered with our Sisters of the OLSH, former Chevalier students, families, friends, and benefactors to mark this special day”, and our MSC and OLSH communities in Vietnam came together for a beautiful service that celebrated the love of the Holy Spirit, and our shared mission to spread that love to every nation throughout the world.
Philippines:
Province of the Pacific Islands:
Vietnam:
The Australian website for the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart have shared an account of the Death of Fr Jules Chevalier, from the writings of Fr Charles Piperon, quoted from October 21st in the Jules Chevalier Daily Readings (selected by Jan Bovenmars MSC).
“Father Chevalier’s sickness was rapidly bringing his life to an end. Monday, October 21, was the day on which God, in the plans of his infinite mercy, chose to call to himself his faithful servant. Our Superior General, Father Mayer, had set out in haste from Rome and arrived at Issoudun during the night. Immediately on his arrival, he hurried to Father Chevalier who recognised him and still had the strength to bless him. Father Mayer did not leave him again.
Towards midday a crisis seem to indicate the end. Father Mayer then had the community assembled and with them recited the prayers for the dying. From this moment on prayers were said continually at the deathbed of our Father. At three o’clock, there was a fresh crisis, no less painful than what had preceded; but the infirmarian’s intervention helped him surmount it. This was the last of his sufferings. After that he remained for more than two hours in great calm, almost motionless, as if in a peaceful sleep. Then, like the flickering out of a flame, he fell peacefully asleep in the Lord. The clock struck five and the evening Angelus was ringing in the parish.
Thus died our beloved Father, surrounded by his intimates and by some of his religious who had come from various parts to assist at his last hour and to render him their final respects. He had lived eighty-three years, six months and six days, the greater part of which – fifty-three years – had, by a special design of divine Providence, been spent in the town of Issoudun.”
Together, we pray for Fr Chevalier in his eternal rest in the Lord’s love, and we continue, encouraged in our shared missionary journey “to be on Earth the heart of God”.
Sources:
Missionaries of the Sacred Heart Australia
Facebook – Ametur MSC
Facebook – MSC Scholasticate Community-Philippines
Facebook – Missionaries of the Sacred Heart – Province of the Pacific Islands
Facebook – MSC Vietnam
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