Bit by Bit

Update by James Mansaray:  Freetown, Sierra Leone

Each time a donation towards the new NHA Compound comes in, it is sent to Freetown and another piece of the puzzle is created to finish the project.   

Doors and panels are being prepared now in Freetown.  

As the woodwork and trim is progressing, the bigger - most necessary things must wait to be worked on  until the money is in.

We still have to put in the well, final plumbing, wiring for generator hook-up plus more work - all necessary for your NHA Sierra Leone staff to move in.  It will not only be me and my family (your staff) without shelter, it will mean the supplies and the distributions - everything will be halted.   We have so many depending on us BUT as a Team we have proven over and over what we can do - together, nations blended to help the poor.  The important work yet to be done to the NHA Compound cannot be done without your help - we need donations NOW.

You know the work that is being done through Nazareth House.   It only takes a few scrolls backwards on this blog to see the results of your generous donations.  

This Compound is a one time expenditure, but our aid to those that suffer will continue.   It is necessary to finish this NHA Compound quickly so that we can further engage in our work helping those in need.  

Please, please send in an extra donation today. 

Nazareth House Apostolate

2216 Goldsmith Lane

Louisville, KY 40218

NHA School in Kabala

Report by James Mansaray, Freetown, Sierra Leone

Last month’s visit to Kabala brought out plenty of smiling faces of our beloved NHA schools students.  A new school year is now underway. 

Everyday there are more children streaming in for admission, a new set of pupils promoted to class 5 with just a year more before we have the first set to prepare for the external common entrance examination which will guarantee them a step to Junior Secondary school.

Looking at all the progress we've all made in the development of the NHA School, it brings a twinkle to my eye and it should do the same to you.  

As this new school year rolled around, with the collection for the NHA Compound and other needs, we hated to ask you all for the needs of the school.  

The joint effort we all made in the previous years in providing uniforms for our pupils was never talked about for we hate to ask and ask always, but the need was there. 

So again, this year, my wife Kadijah and I made personal sacrifices to provide the uniforms rather than cause Mama Vicki to put more burden on you to help us with more funding.  

Yet still a whole lot of students need some more as we continue to admit more pupils that can’t afford to pay anything.  They desperately need the primary education and we cannot and will not turn them away.

As the students graduate to next levels of education, their promotion means new subjects and the cause for new teaching materials.  

A list of most need text books was presented to me to buy in Freetown.  Properly at least each child needs a set of these books, but with no extra funding we simply purchased a set for each teacher and the students must copy from the blackboard. 

We are struggling at the school, to provide the proper education without the necessary equipment and tools.  However, NHA is stifled in moving forward on taking care of these issues until we complete the payment process on the NHA Compound. 

Every penny extra over our normal monthly budget for humanitarian needs must be applied toward the compound.    I don't know how to put into the words how great the NEED is to finish this compound.  It is our Center of Operations. 

How can you operate such a work without a place to work out of? Yes, my wife and family will take up residence in the building but it is so much more than shelter over our heads! The need is so great.   Without it, we simply can't continue the work at the capacity that people in Sierra Leone have been depending on us to do.  

You have started so much in your work through NHA, so many lives are changed for the better, yet there is so much more that MUST continue.   

We cannot allow it all to stop in its tracks and not move forward.   Look at the faces of these students - they deserve an education.   

They should have the opportunity to have at least one meal each day, shelter from the weather, healthcare - all the things that NHA can provide them with your help.

When you see the needs; think about noticing a poor, beaten man lying on the road. Should you cross to the other side of the road?  Look away?  Ignore?  Or will you show 

the poor mercy and care for them?   

Please give to NHA today.  You can send money to 2216 Goldsmith Lane, Louisville, KY 40218 or through the paypal donation link on the NHA Website.  

Thanks a million for you help...and remember everything helps - no matter how small.  

James.

......Then Jesus said to him "Go and do likewise".  Luke 10:30-37

Until we meet again...

Nazareth House Apostolate extends their heartfelt sympathy to the family of Maria Lopez of our Nazareth House Chapter, Bogart, Georgia.

Maria (Medina) Lopez

Maria Medina Lopez, 78, of Athens, GA passed away Monday, October 11, 2010.

A native of Lima, Peru, Mrs. Lopez was the daughter of the late Jose and Margarita Medina. She was a homemaker and a member of the Catholic Church.

Survivors include her husband, Claudio Lopez Sr; daughter, Angela del-Aguila and husband, Fernando of Athens; son, Claudio Lopez Jr and wife, Shelly of Athens; sisters, Margarita La Madrid of Athens and Amelia Medina of Lima, Peru; brothers, Jose Medina of Athens and Ricky Medina of Atlanta; 9 grandchildren, and 5 great-grandchildren.

Funeral services will be held 1PM Wednesday, October 13th in the chapel at Bernstein Funeral Home with Fr. Seraphim Hicks officiating. Interment will follow at Evergreen Memorial Park. The family will receive friends from 7-9PM Tuesday, October 12th at Bernstein.

Online condolences may be offered at www.bernsteinfuneralhome.com

You have went ahead of us,  Maria, however, you are always with us.  Someday, we will catch up with you.   Until then, thanks for the love, the guidance and all the memories (especially of that smile).    We love you!

OCTOBER 7: The Feast of the Holy Rosary

The following is an overview of  the Nazareth House Apostolate (Order of Jesus of Nazareth) teaching.

THE THOUSAND DAY NAZARETH©2010 NHA (2 Peter 3:8)

1. The Three Ideals: Obedience, Conversion and Stability.

2. The Three Paths to God: Prayer, Work and Study.

3. The Seven Precepts

1. I relinquish doubt and embrace faith
2. I relinquish certitude and embrace paradox.
3. I relinquish apathy and embrace fidelity
4. I relinquish power and embrace vulnerability
5. I relinquish prestige and embrace humility
6. I relinquish possessions and embrace poverty
7. I relinquish the old self and embrace the new self

4. The Four Tenets ©2010 NHA:

1. In a savorless world may I be salt. -Mt. 5:13
2. In a darkened world may I be light. -Mt. 5:14
3. In a flattened world may I be leaven.- Mt. 13:33
4. In a barren world may I be branch. – Jn. 15:5

5. The Prayer Cord (Ecc.4:12; Jn. 14:6):

• In the first cord, I pray the Way of Jesus
• In the second cord, I pray the Name of Jesus
• In the third cord, I pray the Life of Jesus

Walking the path we pray and praying the path we walk

6. The Five Faults of a Receptacle ©1999 NHA:

In praying the Thousand Day Nazareth, we must avoid the Five Faults of a receptacle.

1. If we don’t listen to the teaching, we are like an overturned bowl, nothing can enter in  (Isa.28:12; Mk 8:18).
2. If we don’t put the teachings into practice, we are like a bowl with a hole in it, everything leaks out (James 1:22; 4:17).
3. If we are double minded, this is similar to using an unclean bowl, corrupting what it holds (James 1:8, Mt. 23:25).
4. If we are full of ourselves, we are like a bowl -”Inn” – where there is no room for Him (Luke 2:7; Rev. 3:20).
5. If we are untrusting then what is placed in our bowl will never be enough (Luke 2:25-32; Mt. 6:33).

We go about receiving what is placed in our day (our bowl), good or bad, this then becomes our offering to God and God’s nourishment to us.

7. The Poorer Means©

“Go, sell, give and so become poor.  Take up your cross and follow Him into the moment…as leaven into the dough of humanity that it may rise to become bread of Eucharist for the hungry…As leaven, invisible that He might be visible…being flung out to the furthest places by His centrifugal love and at the same time being pulled paradoxically into the centre by His centripetal love…as salt, light, leaven and branch to the edges and to the centre of a savorless, dark, flat and barren world…  Establish Houses of Nazareth, reveal Jesus, follow Jesus revealed…poor, as Jesus was poor…Pray always.”    Fr. Seraphim OJN

NHA October Daily Prayer Intentions

The NHA Rosary Convocation’s Intentions

for October

The following intentions, based on the teachings of the Apostolate’s “Thousand Day Nazareth”, are suggested, one for each day of the month. 

1. May I be obedient, doing exactly what God says, immediately, with the right heart attitude.  Acts 5:29; Rom. 1:5; Heb. 5:9

2. May I continue to grow through deepening The Prayer. Psalm 42:7; 64:6

3. May I have stability of place and vocation. Ps.16:8; ICor. 7:20

4. May I relinquish doubt and embrace faith. Rom.4:20-25; 14:23.

5. May I relinquish certitude and embrace paradox. Rom.8:28,29.

6. May I relinquish apathy and embrace fidelity.  Jms. 4:17; 2Cor. 5:15

 7. May I relinquish power and embrace vulnerability.  Lk 18:9; Prov. 3:5,6. Ps. 78:7

8. May I relinquish prestige and embrace humility. Prov.6:16, 17; Jms 4:6

9. May I relinquish possessions and embrace poverty. Mt.5:3; Lk.1:53

10. May I relinquish the old self and embrace the new self.  Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:9-10.

11. May I be salt in a savorless world. Mt.5:13

12. May I be light in a darkened world.  Mt. 5:14; Jn 1:5

13. May I be leaven in a flattened world. Mt.13:33

14. May I be branch in a barren world. Jn 15:5

15. May I be pulled from my comfort zones to suffer the world’s sufferings. Col. 1:24; 1Cor12:26;             Heb 11:25; 13:3.

16. May I walk the path I pray and pray the path I walk. Lk. 18:1; 1Tim2:8; Mt.4:19

17. May I become a World Christian by ceasing to be a worldly one. Mk 16:15; Acts1:8; 1Jn 2:15

18. May I bear my cross, realizing it is made up of all the crosses that are refused to be carried, mine and theirs. Mk 10:21

19. May I come to realize and experience that God is perfectly hidden and perfectly revealed in each moment. Mt. 28:10b, 20b.

20. May I be flung out to the furthest places by a centrifugal Love.  Mk 16:15

21. May I be pulled into the center by his centripetal Love. Lk 17:21; Acts 17:28; Mt. 11:28.

22. May Jesus be revealed in and through my life. Mt.5:16.May I seek not so much to be stimulated as to trust the ordinariness of the present moment.  Mt. 6:19-21;   Phil. 3:8.

23. May I seek not so much to be stimulated as to trust the ordinariness of the present moment.  Mt. 6:19-21;   Phil. 3:8.

24. May I trust my life, surrendered to Him, to be enough for God to do what He desires.  2Cor. 10:12,13.

25. May I embrace that for which there is no substitute.   Lk. 10:38-42; Acts 4:12; Ps. 84:3a

26. May I find that being deprived of prayer is more painful than being deprived of the answer to prayer.  Jer.33:3

27. May I let go, let God and let be. Prov. 3:5,6.

28. May I understand fully the question that makes Jesus the answer.  Phil. 2:5

29. May I be more for Jesus than I am against something. Mt. 6:33

30. May He increase and I decrease. Jn 3:30

31. May I love everybody; love without limits. Jn 13:34,35; Jn 3:16; Mt 5:43-46.

Can you believe it? Roo is 4 years old today!

Across America this October 2nd we notice that the Fall Season is settling in. 


 Leaves are changing from green to brilliant crimson, gold and orange.  The air is cool.



















































For Nazareth House Apostolate,  the second day of October points to something else.  

Today is little Roo's birthday.












































He is fours years old!




My! how the time flies.   Roo's (aka Laurence Thomas Mansaray) bright smiling face has brightened many a NHA blog posts.


Living amidst the poverty of Sierra Leone, Roo embodies the attitude of most of the children of that West African nation.

The Salone's children's attitude that "there is always something to be happy about, don't hide your smile". 

Like all children, Roo loves to have fun and he loves the beach.  

And in Sierra Leone, they have some of the most beautiful beaches you can find. 

Many of us are aware of the (not so) "secret" that Roo carries...

He is a Salone Super Hero...

smile after smile, Roo gives a glimpse of the difference that can be made in someone's life.   A difference you - through Nazareth House Apostolate - HAVE made and continue to make. 

God bless you all for what your support of NHA

and to ROO

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

NHA LOVES YOU VERY MUCH!

Happy Birthday Sweet Lucy

Lucy Jamestina Mansaray is 14 years old today!

Lucy, Lucy, Lucy

 You have grown up so fast

It is hard to believe that 

you were but a tiny toddler 

when we first met and now you are 14 years old!

Wishing you all the love

and happiness

from all of Nazareth House Apostolate

especially from Fr. (Seraphim) Hicks

Mama Vicki

We all love you very much! 

Thanks for all the work you to provide 

for those in need

through NHA.   You are such a great help to us all.