We’ve started a garden a couple of weeks ago and yesterday harvested our first  spinach crop. We are hoping to sell the spinach at a rock bottom price to our neighbors. A small effort to contribute to a healthy diet for a people who are malnourished. The regular price at the market is 200 Shillings, we are selling one bunch of spinach for 50 Shillings, so I thought we’d have a lot of customers right away for this ‘give  away’. But no, only a few have taken advantage of this ‘sale’. Why? Even the 50 Shillings (which is around 4 cents), people don’t have readily on them.

 

Last week we were blessed with two small groups who came for a day retreat(10am-4pm). The first group came from Kirumba Parish, the parish the House of Prayer is located. They were the Catechists for the parish, 3 men and a woman. Catechists in the local church act like Deacons but without the status or power. It was a pleasure to spend the day with them for I too when I was a parish priest relied heavily on their services.

The second group came from a local Catholic dispensary run by a Sisters Congregation. The entire staff of the dispensary came (15) for a day of prayer, reflection and rest. Like the Catechists I appreciated very much the service they provided to the community in health care.

Part of the vision of the House of Prayer is to provide days like these to the servants of the church/society. It is just one way we contribute to the community for if the servants are rested and have a strong felt presence of the Lord, their service will be of quality.

We have started a garden planting okra, onions and spinach. We want to begin the process of being more self-sufficient in regards to food. Our goal is to make it an organic garden (no chemicals please). We have hired Maria a poor woman to oversee the garden.

We are told that for our first harvest we will get more spinach than we can use for our daily needs at the House of Prayer. So we will sell the excess at half the market price to our praying community and neighbors.

We are thankful for the generous amount of rain we’ve been getting this period; for the first time in a long time that I can remember it is acting like a real rainy season.

But we’ve got an unexpected challenge for the growth of our garden, monkeys. For the past few months monkeys have been invading our area and eating ALL our mangoes(I didn’t eat ONE mango last harvest). I was told they won’t bother the garden and they don’t eat spinach.

We must have some health savvy monkeys because I saw them sitting in the spinach patch munching away happily on our newly forming spinach.

What to do? For now we are gathering ideas to keep the monkeys away: get some dogs, spray chemicals, spread fresh cow dung, hire a guard; all these are not very appealing. Until we find a solution it looks like the monkeys will get some of the harvest and hopefully they won’t like spinach they way they do mangoes.

Two days ago we had 27 visitors for a day retreat from the local and surrounding parishes. Our day retreats have a contemplative pace that seeks to be in concert with the vision of the House of Prayer of sharing the Contemplative Tradition of the Church with the people.

Small group retreats and offering hospitality for individual overnight retreats are the main ways we offered people  to enter the Silence and Solitude at our House of Prayer.

Small group retreats are a way of creating a contemplative culture, providing an opportunity to teach the basics of Christian Contemplation. These settings also help provide an atmosphere that can remind the people the natural settings of contemplation they left behind in the villages where they are from.

A woman speaking for the retreatants at the end of our retreat spoke of hearing something new, something they never heard before but a something that has touched their heart. We are grateful for such a Touch of the Spirit.

On Nov 20th we will be marking one year since our Grand  Opening of the House of Prayer. It has been a year to be grateful for our steady growth in welcoming individual guests, small groups for day retreats along with our regular praying community.

While we are very thankful for this steady growth we are challenged by the fact that many people still don’t know about us. What to do? We are setting up a series of one day retreats for Religious Sisters who live and work in Mwanza. There are 60 congregations, so we will invite 10 groups at a time, 5 sisters from each of the 10 groups.

Our first retreat for Sisters will be in Advent. Two days ago I visited 4 convents inviting the sisters personally along with giving them information about the House of Prayer.

Another development is that the Bishop has scheduled all his diocesan priests to come to the House of Prayer for individual retreats (4 at a time). We are grateful for the trust the Bishop has placed in us in having his priests come for these retreats which will start in Feb. 2018.

As we reach out we are thankful for the unfolding of the House of Prayer. We pray for an open heart to engage the Mystery of the House of  Prayer’s growth in the future.

Mwanza is called Rock City because of the millions of rock formations all through the surrounding hills that make up this geographically fascinating urban rock city. People, especially poor people will build their tiny shacks on top of rocks (saves on buying cement for the foundation).

Then there are the rock-breakers, men who are hired to break and remove these large rocks. We have a rock-breaker now on property whom we hired to break a huge rock that has been making it difficult for trucks delivering building supplies to pass. So, after avoiding this necessary job we have hired someone to break and remove this rock.

How does he do it? Charcoal. He places charcoal in wired containers which he places at strategically located points on the rock. This is key because the charcoal heats the rock to a point it can be split by the rock-breaker.

This comes at cost, cutting a trees down to make charcoal. We’ve had to buy many large bags of charcoal at the market to do this very difficult work.

All  poor people use charcoal to cook and the trees of Tanzania are being cut down at an alarming pace. People continue to cook using charcoal despite government restrictions. The poor cannot afford cooking gas or kerosene to cook with. So what to do if you want to eat? Charcoal.

What to do if you want to remove a huge rock that is causing a lot of trouble? Charcoal. Yes, it provides jobs. Yes, it helps development. Yes, it provides millions of poor Tanzanians fuel for cooking. But yes, it is destroying the forests of Tanzania. The Dilemma.

Yesterday a record was set for our every three months English Contemplative Retreat. We hosted 17 people. This number was very surprising for me because we are used to hosting an average of 3 people. So like the disciples when they saw the size of the catch Jesus guided them to I wanted to shout out, “It is the Lord!”.

The group was a nice mixture of Tanzanian and Western, of religious sisters, and lay. Some of the sisters are professors at a Catholic University in Mwanza. Usually when I give talks in English it is to people from the USA or Europe so it was a unique change for me to stay in English with the Tanzanians.

The main focus of the day was on the Jesus Prayer. This prayer dates back to the 4th century in the desert of Egypt with the Desert Fathers and Mothers who fled to the desert to practice total commitment to the spiritual life in Christ Jesus. The schedule combine three talks with three meditation sessions, private time in silence, yoga and a hearty plate of beans and rice.

We also used a Taize chant that we sung to prepare for silence meditation. This addition really brought a deeper tranquility to the interior saying of the Jesus Prayer for the people. Something to use for the future.

A few days ago one of our guards came arrived at work and promptly laid himself out full length on a large stone. When I saw him I thought he was sleeping and called him over to where I was sitting watching the sunset.

He explained to me that he was fine when he left his home a short distance from here but when he arrived at the House of Prayer he was stricken suddenly and started vomiting. This happens a lot with people, they have the capacity to carry sickness for long periods of time without any medication then suddenly the disease overcomes them and they fall violently sick.

We called a motorcycle driver to take him home to rest and get treatment. Yesterday our guard, Athmani, came to work. He said when the motorcycle driver was taking him home he could hardly sit upright on the back of the motorcycle. The driver turned around and said, “Give me your hand”, so he would not fall off the motorcycle. I don’t know how they manage but the motorcycle driver got him home safely driving with one hand for steering and the other hand holding on to a very sick Athmani keeping him from falling off and causing more challenges.

A small gesture that no one saw but a profound one: Lending a hand to someone in trouble.