Visitors from Austria
Ingeborg and Richard Sickinger, a Schoenstatt couple from Austria visited our community in Bangalore and write about their experiences with us: The highlight of our journey includes our talks with P Wilson, our very attentive host and other fathers and students. The crown of our visit is, of course, the participation in the opening ceremony of the new noviciate course.
We visited, unfortunately, only 3 days in Bangalore. The purpose of our visit was the official business with Siemens. We were received by a young man in the office who invited us to his home where we met his wife and children. His house and his way of life became somewhat familiar to us.
Most of our time was with the Schoenstatt Fathers (and also with the Sisters). From morning to night we were talking to our Indian friends. That was wonderful. We felt very strongly in the people: the interest, sympathy and openness; it created a wonderful atmosphere.
For us, Bangalore is - humanly, economical and religious - a city with large potential. The deep religious way of life is the actual and huge strength that is experiential with the young fathers and students, when they spoke about their origin of their family and vocation; and it is the same with our Hindu teammate. The Catholics now surely have a hard time because of the political situation. It fascinated us also when the sisters explained to us: even the Hindu children deposit something into the dump jug when they come to visit the shrine. They also want to give something gladly to the Mother of God. That is a procedure, which obviously finds its way into each heart.
We find also that Fr Wilson is remarkable as educator. We have the impression that he sets an emphasis in promoting self-initiative of the young men: to develop, realize and apply ideas. We believe that this is a large profit not only for them personally but for the Schoenstatt community and also for the country.
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