Father Joseph Gyim-Austin welcomed nine fellow African priests of the Saskatoon Roman Catholic Diocese to Sacred Heart Parish at Davidson last week to act as a support group for each other as they try to understand the troubles in their home countries and to reflect on their own work here in Saskatchewan.

“As much as we are here working your mind is always on your people,” said Gyim-Austin, a native of Ghana. “You want to be sure that whatever they are doing wouldn’t distract you from your work, but of course you still think about your relatives over there.”

Father Patrick Ampani, Father Aloysius Anyichie, Father Emmanuel Azike, Father Augustine Ebido, Father Iheanyi Enwerem, Father Ndubuisi Mbah, Father Modestus Ngwu, Monsignor Matthew Tuffuor-Amoah and Father Martin Vuni joined Gyim-Austin in Davidson last Monday and Tuesday. The 10-person group includes two Ghanaians, seven Nigerians and one native of South Sudan.

Gyim-Austin said each man briefed the others on the situation in their home country Monday evening after supper to help each of them think about what is occurring on the ground in the west central African coastal countries of Ghana and Nigeria and the east central landlocked country of South Sudan. He said this knowledge helps them to pray for peace in these countries.

A focus on relaxation was also high on the priest’s agenda, said Gyim-Austin, as last Monday did follow the hectic days of Easter celebrations at each priest’s Parish. He said the men used the evening’s downtime to discuss how they celebrated Easter as well as the work each of them does at the Diocese and how to help the Diocese to grow.

“On Tuesday morning…they all were there for mass,” said Gyim-Austin, adding each of the visiting priests was able to help him celebrate mass because they all had their stoles and albs with them in Davidson. “Then after mass we also went to the Hall for breakfast which was very good because going from the mass to the table also was part of getting to know the people and to know the community that I’m serving. They got some sense of the life here in the Parish and in the community.”

Gyim-Austin said the Easter Monday gathering was the second time the African priests were able to get together for a discussion on their homeland and their work in Canada. He said the group first got together last Christmas in Martensville through an invitation by the Saskatoon Diocese after it was learned the number of practising African priests in Saskatchewan is increasing.

“We realized we do not know (each other) even though we are from the same continent,” he said. “It’s a means to get in touch with priests within other parts of Africa, so that at least you (know someone) if you have to go and visit a friend who works here in the Diocese. It’s (then) to continue the friendship that we have already established.”

The next meeting is tentatively planned for this August at Manitou Beach, but the group would like to extend their membership to other African priests working in this province.  Gyim-Austin said they are now working on trying to find new members of the group in areas such as the Archdiocese of Regina and the Diocese of Prince Albert.

“We are just trying to form the group,” he said. “We know there are a lot of other priests from other countries in Africa working in other places. It’s a gradual process to get in touch with them and then put our program before them.”

The Davidson United Church is welcoming everyone to take a journey towards shaping and sharing their own stories in relation to the ‘kin-dom’ of God through a resource used to explore and understand the Bible as a ‘novel’ format.

Mary Smillie, a member of the Davidson United Church, said they are working to help people accomplish this goal by presenting sessions on “The Story” at the United Church beginning this Sunday at 9 a.m. with the creation story. She said these sessions are a follow-up on their recently concluded rural spirit study that found, in part, people don’t really know what is in the Bible and consider the book inaccessible.

Smillie said the Bible has a tonne of “chapters and verses and verses and chapters” in different books, so what the authors of “The Story” have done is distilled these parts down to the key stories. She said it reads like a novel in 31 chapters from Genesis to Revelations and in addition to the book there are also DVDs and CDs and a few other different resources to make the teachings of the Bible easier to relate to.

“They suggest that the Bible offers us a glimpse of the upper story, what the authors call God’s plan for us on Earth, as well as the lower story, which is how people of that time either did or didn’t do what God was hoping for, so it’s fairly basic,” said Smillie. “What we have going at Davidson United these days is we’ve had the opportunity to invest in some audio/visual equipment, so we have…the whole big screen and sound system and stuff in the main part of the church, (and) it really lends itself for us to do this multi-media approach to bring together the various resources together of “The Story”.”

Smillie said it is their church’s belief that there is multiple ways to approach God and it is really an individual process. She said they have no intention of saying the Bible is the only way, so they are encouraging people to shape their own path by embarking on whatever journey they may want to be on.

“What we’re creating is an opportunity for anybody who is curious about what is in the Bible to have an easier way (of) figuring out what’s in it and what meaning they might be able to bring from it,” she said, adding “The Story” has many age-specific versions and can be accessed by people from preschoolers to adults.

To read more please see the April 28 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Incoming Prairie South School Division director of education Tony Baldwin is excited to begin this new phase in his career as an educator in a time of historic change to the education sector in Saskatchewan.

Shortly after it was announced earlier this month that Baldwin would become the director of education for Prairie South effective this August, Saskatchewan Education Minister Don Morgan along with Saskatchewan School Boards Association (SSBA) president Janet Foord announced the implementation of the Education Sector Strategic Plan (ESSP). The ESSP is the first ever province-wide plan to be developed in co-operation with all education sector partners, approved by the 28 school boards in the province and accepted by the Government of Saskatchewan.

Baldwin said ESSP is a change from the Continuous Improvement and Accountability Framework that has been given from the ministry to school divisions for the past seven or eight years and names a series of things the ministry requires school divisions to be constantly improving. He said the ESSP is a new model that gets school divisions working together with the ministry to figure out what the areas are that each division has to address as they move forward to have a better education system in five years than there is now.

“School divisions are (now) in the process of developing something called a Level 2 plan, which will be sort of a school division specific response to the Education Sector Strategic Plan provincially,” said Baldwin. “It’s the first time since I’ve been an educator…that there’s ever been a single provincial improvement plan that is driven by school divisions rather than driven by the government.”

He said a good example of how education plans would be influenced by the specific context of the individual school divisions is graduation rates, which are one of the things that the education sector is trying to address provincially. Currently in Saskatchewan about 73 per cent of kids who start Grade 10 finish Grade 12 three years later, but in Prairie South that number is around 82 per cent.

Baldwin said the provincial goal is to have a province wide graduation rate of 85 per cent by 2020, so Prairie South may not need to focus on that as much as some other school divisions because they’re nearly at the goal already. That means the division could decide to invest some of the work at improving graduation rates into other areas.

The ESSP “is one of the things that is very interesting for me starting this job now (because) the school divisions are just working on their Level 2 plans that are aligned with the provincial strategic plan right now and those plans are going to extend to 2020, so really that’s the bulk of what’s left of my career,” said Baldwin. “It’s kind of neat to be able to start in a school division at the beginning of that planning process.”

Arm River-Watrous MLA Greg Brkich has won the nomination to become the Saskatchewan Party candidate for the Arm River constituency in the next provincial election.

Brkich defeated contestant Clark Puckett in a vote held among party members at a nomination meeting last Tuesday at Davidson Town Hall. He will be seeking his fifth term in office as a Saskatchewan Party MLA when the next provincial election is held likely sometime in spring 2016.

“The support was overwhelming,” said Brkich after the vote. “I was really impressed with the support I got from the people in the room.”

Around 300 people filed into the Hall to cast their ballot after hearing both men speak about their previous experiences and qualifications to be the next Party candidate and what issues they would advocate for if elected.

“That humbled me,” said Brkich. “I was very impressed because there was people from all over the constituency. Some had to drive as much as an hour-and-a-half to two hours to come here to take part in this nomination.”

The new Arm River constituency encompasses much of the same territory as Brkich’s current riding except Watrous will no longer be included and Craik would.

The new riding would stretch down to past Central Butte in the southwest and run north along Lake Diefenbaker. It will then go above Hanley and move east under Watrous before hitting Big Quill Lake and then move down and west towards Last Mountain Lake. Using the lake as a natural boundary, it will head south passing just above Strasbourg on its way to Regina Beach before cutting straight across above Moose Jaw on its way back to near Central Butte.

Brkich said the support he received in the campaign for the nomination was strong from the outset, but as in every election he ran as if he was one vote behind. He said the campaign team worked hard throughout the six-week race and were able to increase their membership in the party to over 500 members, which also bodes well for the next election.

“It increases the awareness,” he said. “Also, because this constituency does change quite a bit (with) the new one, I got to make a lot of new contacts that I wouldn’t have made till close to the election. In the long run it’s going to be a very good benefit for us for the next election with the contacts I’ve made in each and every town throughout the constituency in the new part (of the riding).”