Dear Friends :                         PEACE!!!                 JOY!!!               LOVE!!!

That it should come to this! My Monthly Letter is getting as decrepit as its writer. It’s dragging its feet so badly, it has turned into a Tri-Monthly Letter! Besides, though I have good friends down at the post office, they look askance at stampless letters. So I have to do a heist—in Edmonton, as a matter of fact, but don’t tell the constabulary!—to get money for the stamps! But at last I can manage to write this letter that brings down the curtain on ‘our’ SASAC.

Only God can see into the future, but this I know. The years I ran SASAC—as a Scotch song my dear Glasgow-born Mom used to sing in her soft, sweet voice—I took the low road and the new Director is taking the high road. I’m sure in his Monthly Letters Father Tommy will tell you where the high road takes SASAC. But the time has come for me, like the Lone Ranger—a radio hero of my early boyhood—to mount my trusty steed and “ Hi! Ho! Silver! Away!!!”

But before I disappear into the sunset, you may ask how I am feeling. I am feeling full of gratitude and for three good reasons. First, because of my Great Depression boyhood, I have always thought the best and most dignified way to help the poor is to give them meaningful work. When you do that, you give them freedom and make it possible for them to lead their own lives and feed their children. Over the 48 years that SASAC has been in existence we have employed thousands and thousands of poor mothers and fathers. Not only have we helped them, but they have helped other poor people with their work in our many projects: building homes for poor families, making furniture for them, growing the best of food and building retaining walls to save their homes from threatening landslides, etc. The people who find most joy in helping the poor are the poor themselves. Making it possible for thousands of poor to help thousands of more poor has been a special gift from God. May he be thanked and praised!

My second reason for feeling chockfull of gratitude is the fact that we have been able to educate thousands of the poorest boys and girls. How that has transformed their lives! Every now and then, the Lord shows me something that assures me that whatever happens to SASAC as an institute, the spirit of SASAC will live for generations to come. A couple of weeks ago, I was visiting Sister Margaret. Her mother, Bindhoo, besides being a saint—a very good thing to be!—was one of the happiest ‘coolies’ we had when building the new Saint Alphonsus School in the early ‘60s. Though a tiny woman, she carried up tricky bamboo ladders hundred of bags of cement on her back. When we were cutting away the mountain, she lugged off rocks almost as big as herself. Her four children were all in our SAS Poultry and got an excellent education. Her daughter, Sister Margaret, is now running a school for 1400 better-off girls. I’m not too happy about that, not because I have anything against the better-off but she joined the Daughters of the Cross precisely to help the poor. But you can’t keep a good man down, much less a good woman. Though Margaret has a time-consuming job, she is doing a wonderful work for the poorest of the poor. Close to her school, there is the Balasan River. During the dry months, it almost dries up so the river bed is bare. Every time I go to the airport, I cross over a bridge above the Balasan. I call it the Bridge of Sighs. As far as I can see to the north and south there are men, women and children sitting on the dry river bed breaking stones into gravel with little hammers. Crouched under tattered, faded umbrellas to protect themselves from the scorching heat, they work from dawn to dusk—families of them! During the monsoon, they trap the silt coming down from the Himalayas and it becomes the sand put into the thousands of buildings going up in our area. They earn less than a dollar a day. They live in miserable shacks made out of black plastic sheets which means they live in ovens.

It is the children of these miserably poor families that go to Margaret’s special school. She already has 205 children in her school. She had convinced the parents of her rich school to give her the money she needs to build another building for her poor children. She insists that the poor children will get the same facilities and the same quality of education that is given to the better-off and rich children. It’s in SASAC graduates like Margaret, and I know there are many of them, that the work you and I with God’s grace have been able to do, will live on. To him be thanks and praise!

The third reason I am full of gratitude to the Lord is YOU! I’m sure no man walking the face of the earth today has had more generous, faithful, loving friends and partners in his work for the poor than I have had. If I were pope, I’d canonize the whole d. crowd of you, making a new holy Milky Way in the heavens to the amazement of Seraphim and Cherubim. I can’t tell you what an inspiration you have been to me. I am on the spot, I see the poor and their needs and how their lives are transformed with a little help and lots of love. It’s easy for me to love them. But you are far away and yet you love them as I do. You deserve the praise of Christ: “Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.” I’ve often wondered whether Jesus would have fed the 5000 if the little boy had not been willing to ‘cough up’ his five loaves! I know—especially in our present situation when we have had to close down 90% of our projects for the poor because your gifts can’t reach us—that I could have done nothing, but nothing, for the poor without your help. I pray for you, I thank God for you, I ask him to fulfill all the desires of your hearts because you have given up a little of your life, so the thousands and thousands of poor in this corner of the Himalayas can ‘have a life’.

And so the sun is setting. It’s been a glorious day. Over the last 48 years I have written you thousands upon thousands of words in my Monthly Letters. But now to express to all of you what is in my heart and fills me with joy, I write only one word: thanks!

Your Brother in Darjeeling,

P.S. 1. For me, the most painful thing is this: because Jesuit headquarters assured me that our money would only be frozen for a short time, I carried on building our Training Center and ordering supplies for our Community Hall. I ran up heavy debts with many ‘little people’ who are also close friends. They have not been paid for over a year. Jane Davidson is bringing 20 friends to visit us in October. They could bring me the money I need to pay my friends and feel at peace. If you could send her some money, I would be most grateful. This is my last request—I promise!! Jane’s address: P.O. Box 2024, Bayfield, Ont.; phone: 519 564 2653.-- j.davidson@tcc.on.ca

P.S. 2. Friends in Calgary have published a book of my Rhymed Reflections. Every day I try to type out the thoughts that are in my mind and heart. If you would like to share my life with me a little more intimately, you can get a copy of this book from Sharon Jeanson: 6216—Lewis Dr S W, Calgary Ab T3E 5Y3-- deeajeanson@shaw.ca  

P.S. 3. Priscilla Wryzykowski and her team have completed a wonderful movie about SASAC based on filming done in late 2005. Randy Helten is working on getting a gift copy (DVD format) to all SASAC supporters this summer. He has set up a website of the SASAC Supporters’ Coalition for the SASAC family outside of India, in the hopes of supporting the work we have started. Please visit www.SASAC.ca  or write info@SASAC.ca  for more information.

Your in the Lord,
Fr. A sj