Our House of Prayer continues to receive guests and as the Swahili proverb goes, “Mgeni akija wenyeji wapone”(A guest comes the locals get well), we are greatly blessed.

We had our first priests for a five day retreat, one for a directed retreat, the other a private one. Both are from Missionary Congregations so I was feeling the brotherhood of the priesthood along with the brotherhood of Mission.

A group of 16 visitors from the USA came a sat with us during our Friday evening Mediation. It was a dream come true to have Africans and Americans sitting in Silence and Stillness praying in a language beyond words.

Yesterday we had the family of our Maryknoll Pastor at Mabatini Parish sit with us for evening Meditation. They are Vietnam. Again like the previous group one could sense of the global nature on our existence on this Planet sitting in the language everyone understands, Silence.

In a couple of weeks we be welcoming a group of Polish youth visiting an international congregation of missioners. They will be coming along with some Tanzanian youth.

People here treasure guests, especially the poor, without electronic distractions/entertainment they find joy in the old tradition of welcoming guests like God is visiting them.

On my morning walks to the Lake I pass by two natural springs which have been a source of water for the local people for many years. But just in only a few months I have noticed a difference, the lines are longer waiting for the water to surface and the wait goes on from before dawn until mid-morning.

Myself, I have had to buy water that is delivered by truck to finish the building of our wall and for our guests. The Water department continues to struggle getting water to its customers on a regular basis. Of course my challenge is not on a survival level as those women waiting patiently for a bucket of water for their thirsty families.

Last week after prayer one of the women asked me if  she could take some of the left over wood from our latest building project. The poor usually use charcoal for cooking which they buy in small amounts to manage cooking for a day (which can mean only one meal a day). The charcoal is made from trees that are being chopped down at an alarming rate, so much so the government has forbid the making of charcoal.

The charcoal that is available is expensive and hard to find. The women have to find another source of cooking fuel, “kuni”(branches from trees, bushes, or left over wood from building sites). Unfortunately this contributes to the continued ecological diminishment of the land.

The woman who took our left over wood said, with a smile, it would last her three days. Three days, that is a long time when one is struggling to find the basics for life every single day. How people handle this daily pressure for survival with such grace and patience, is a valuable lesson for me.

We are now just completing the 3rd stage of our wall. When I first started here 3 years ago we put up a wire fence to mark off our property. Now that we are receiving guests for retreat we found it necessary to create a more private space for people. The response has been very  positive.

Judy is working on creating a garden as the first experimental effort to create beautiful spaces for people to sit and enjoy when on retreat or just coming by to relax a bit from the daily grind.

We have a Sister from the Congo with us for a 8-day Directed Retreat. Our House is taking more and more a global flavor, a trend, we hope only endures and grows.

We had three American Lay Missioners for our Sunday Meditation Retreat. A small group but top quality.

Our local community of Pray-ers continue to come in good numbers blessing us abundantly with their deep prayerful presence at daily Eucharist and morning/evening Meditation sessions.

 

One thing  that amazes me still after almost 30yrs of living in Tanzania is how disadvantaged people can live so very simply, making something out of nothing. Even more amazing is how so many keep a humble and positive attitude in the face of overwhelming poverty. Of course not all are like this but many  are.

Yesterday I worked all morning  with  our  contractor to  try and get a budget in line for building a new wing for women. The numbers did not work out for a six room building. The money is just not there. What to do? Perhaps just build three rooms!

If  we just build three rooms it might be just what we need to do to be faithful to the Vision of the HOUSE of Prayer. We would have 9 rooms total, 5 for women and 4 for men. Enough. Building more rooms only makes the place more crowded, more noisy and more NON-House of Prayer.

We enjoy receiving, eating and providing overall hospitality for ALL our guests. This has been a great blessing for our guests and us who live here. This is a precious element in the make-up of the HOUSE of Prayer.

Many years ago a classic book came out called “Small is Beautiful”, a prophetic book calling for a more sane, practical, and creative way for developing our world. Perhaps keeping our HOUSE to 9 rooms will give us the opportunity to be channels of Grace for our guests by the fact we will be giving them a humanly satisfying personalized welcome and service.

The tendency is to go BIG and in going BIG one gets the numbers (maybe) but loses on QUALITY. After all as the people have taught me one does not have to go BIG to live a simple, happy life.

There is a Swahili proverb that says, “Mgeni akija, wenyeji wanapona” (‘When the guest comes the locals get well’). These past three weeks have been full of activity, mainly overnight guests activity. We had the Franciscan Sisters come for their weekly overnight, the Cannosians Srs for a day of reflection and silence, Deacon Michael Checnnela came for a 5 day directed retreat in preparation for priestly ordination, the Taize Brothers  visited us from Nairobi for 3 days and finally 3 brothers of the Sacred Heart came for 3 days to prepare for their vow promises.

Judy and I feel very blessed and thankful for our guests. Indeed we ‘got well’ having them with us. Hopefully they also ‘got well’ from spending a few days in Silence, Solitude and Simplicity with their Loving God.

One of the challenges living in a developing country is living in a UN-regulated environment. While there is much progress in bringing order into a large city such as Mwanza, much goes by un-supervised. So in many ‘unplanned’ settlements one can have a bar, church, Hindu temple, Mosque, residential housing, a market and even much more in one small area.

Part of the challenge of this MIX, is that it is a lived experience on the OUTSIDE. Loud speakers are set up to broadcast songs, preaching, music, political announcements, advertisements for soap, beer, cell phones etc.

In our area recently we’ve had a Revival going on for the last two weeks from a Pentecostal church. They start playing their music around 3 pm through their speaker system(people usually are seating outside). The preaching starts at 4pm and goes on till 6:30pm non-stop. These past two weeks we are learning in our 5pm Meditation sessions to seek an inner Silence because there is no outer one.

Today is a important religious day for the Moslems  “ID” which signals the end of Ramadan. All the Mosques call to pray around 5:30am followed by music and preaching, yes through loud speakers. So at least for today, we have to put the lessons we are learning in the evening Meditation to our morning Meditation and Eucharist.

What to do in such a situation? Watch the people. Learn from them. Their patience. Their acceptance. So while the society as a whole is working on how to live healthily with this MIX, one learns daily to discover a Silent place in an other dimension.

 

We had four Cannosian Sisters come up to be with us for a day of retreat. They struck an international flavor being from Hong Kong, Malawi and Tanzania. The day was a mixture of input, silence, reflection, Liturgy and prayer.

They asked me to speak on “Resting in the Heart of Jesus”, a subject (Resting) that I have reflected on much during my short time here at the House of Prayer. What is this “Resting”? How can one be at Rest in the very midst of activity? What is it like to be Centered in the middle of chaos?

It is my hope the good Sisters experienced something of that REST during their short day with us. After all, it doesn’t take much, only a day, to REST in the Lord.

We’ve added two new contemplative services for our people at the House of Prayer. The first is a series of exercises that Judy leads the people in loosing  up their joints. Every Wednesday early evening before meditation and Eucharist Judy guides us from our neck to our feet in bringing our attention to how we carry stress in our bodies and how we can do much to release bodily stiffness through simple exercises. The class has attracted both young and old getting great reviews with the sighing and relaxing of tight muscles and joints.

Our other new contemplative exercise is what is traditionally called “Lectio Divina”, a four step process of reflecting deeply on a passage from Scripture. The response has not been as great as exercising the joints but adequate. Praying with the Scripture in this manner is a perfect complement to Silent Meditation. It helps the people to gain access to God’s Word deep within their spirit.

Not only is the local community taking advantage of these services but our private retreat guests are attending. After all Contemplation ought provide the space to experience the Health, Peace and Joy of God’s Kingdom on earth begun by Jesus.

All the Maryknollers (priests and brothers) in Tanzania, there are 10 of us, get together twice a year for three days of meetings and socializing with one  of the meetings focucing on budget requests for the upcoming year.

This year we could not book our regular venue so we decided to have our meeting at our parish in Mwanza (Mabatini Parish) with our men sleeping at the parish and three at the House of Prayer.

Last year we did not do any building with the idea was to see how people would respond to this new service of a House of Prayer. Also, during this time we would gather information, talk to people to get a sense of what the next major step would be.

Along with the local community we have discovered that Religious Sisters in the various congregations in Mwanza are open to the services we give. But they like to come together in small groups of 5 to 8. We have room for two sisters on our property and 3 more in our annex which is off property. We have had occasion to have to say we could not receive requests for a small group of Sisters who wanted to stay overnight.

So, I have asked for funding from the Maryknoll Apostolic Budget to build a building of six self-contained rooms for women. The request was granted at our just completed meeting and now goes forward for further approvals in a long process. The hope is we will receive the approval in Dec. 2017 and begin building in Jan. of 2018.

 

The Machinga are defined in the Swahili dictionary as, “those people who show their products by their feet”. That is to say those people to walk around  town all day selling just about everything under the sun: bananas, car parts, all types of clothes, shoes, households items, woven floor mats, and on and on.

Yesterday as I pulled up to buy some fruit at the local market a woman with a giant plate of bananas came up to my car before I got out. When I came around to see her bananas showing interest in making a transaction she asked me to help her take the bananas off her head and place them on the ground. I was surprised how heavy they were and mentioned this fact to her at which she smiled. After some good-natured bargaining I bought 10 bananas at around 5 cents a banana.

After leaving the market I spotted a young man walking down the road with ‘mikeka’ (woven floor mats) that  I was in the market for and low and behold there was the market walking right down the road. I pulled over and waved the man over and we started bargaining finally agreeing on a price I bought 3 mikeka for our new exercise our joints period Judy is leading on Wednesday evening before Meditation.

The Machinga sellers have a real rough life walking around all day in the hot sun, many times not getting even one customer. The young man who sold me the mikeka was very pleased at the sale: 3 Mikeka at one time! That was probably a record for him.