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 “Highden.” Sat. 24th May ’69. Dear Mum & Dad, I just got the fright of my life when I realized that Visiting Day is only a week away. Of course any Sisters would be welcome – I don’t think that there is any need to write to Fr. Bennett. I will mention it to him. This week 6 students came from the Mount to stay while at Massey. I also saw Fr. Larkin who is the Form Master of the class of which Leo is the Class Captain. He said that it was a hard class, & that Leo was managing very well! Last Tuesday we had a Conge at Bourke’s – which is about a mile south of Feilding. Today four of us went for a 10 mile run up the Bull’s road. Tim Donoghue’s Father is still rapidly deteriorating but refuses to go to bed. It is hoped that he will be able to come up on June 1st, and if so, he will be staying for a while because he is too weak to make the trip there and back. Old Tim is rather brave because Novitiate is a terrible place to be while waiting for his father to die – he is allowed 21 days off Novitiate by Canon Law so he can’t spend much time at home. We have Benediction every night in May. Here they still sing “Adoremus” during Benediction (or something else appropriate). But there are no pieces of music in English which are appropriate, so have been writing some!! So far I have written four different ones, but we haven’t tried any out yet. If they are no good we will scrap them, but it is better than singing the same “Adoremus” every night. The Provincial Chapter finishes tomorrow. The three going to Rome for the General Chapter are the Provincial (Fr. Bourke), Fr. O’Brien (Timaru) & Fr. Connolly (Auckland – about 33 yrs. Old – he gave our Retreat at the Mount last year, and is brilliant). The news of the week is that Maka has a distant relative by marriage in Tonga whose boyfriend murdered a taxi driver!! Maka knew him quite well (i.e. the murderer) because it is a Tongan custom that when one wants to please a girlfriend you court her relations! Well, I think that that is all the news this week. See you next week. Love from Bruce P.S. We had a big long earthquake here at 2.30 a.m. last night. John Lomu got as far as getting into his slippers, but everyone else was too sleepy to get up. Bruce |