Going Dutch ... ?

Parish partnerships: Den Bosch Diocese, the Netherlands

The Sion Community have been invited by the Bishop to enter into a partnership with them to help establish parish missions along similar lines as we have in England and Ireland. It has been a very interesting experience. Whereas in the UK and Ireland most Catholics tend to attend Church fairly regularly or they do not attend at all. Here in the Netherlands a lot of people are still connected to Church but they only attend on special occasions.

We trained a team of parish visitors to go and visit the families of children who were making their first Holy Communion. Out of 130 families, 110 requested a home visit. The family visits were really special.

We had an opportunity to share our faith, to talk about the Lord and to pray with the families. We also left them some gifts, a candle and prayer book from the parish. We then invited the families to come to Church for a pre- first-communion celebration. It was such a joy to see the large Church packed and really alive.

The parish now hope to follow things up by doing something like an Alpha Course for the families.