Tomorrow I fly to Siem Reap, Cambodia for a Colloquium on Inter-religious dialogue. The main presenter is a Fr. Sebastian, SJ from India who himself has a house of prayer. I am seeing this as an opportunity to deepen my commitment to the Contemplative Life and sharing this  life with our people here at the Lake House of  Prayer.

Yesterday 34 women from Mabatini Parish (my former parish) came for a one day retreat. It was a joyous occasion for all. The women were very thankful for the peacefulness of our place, the gentle breeze of the lake, the many sweet mangoes they picked from our trees, finally the Silence and Prayer.

When I returned from Cambodia on Nov. 16 I will have 3 full days to complete the preparations for our Opening of our House of Prayer. Not exactly the best of situations for such an important event but I’ve done much of the heavy work already and hopefully it will all come together in the end. Either way the challenge is to live whatever the outcome is contemplatively.

The dream of the House of Prayer took another step in its journey to becoming reality when the Bishop and I agreed on a date to “Kuzindua”, to open up officially the “Utume”(Mission) of the “Nyumba ya Sala Ziwani” (Lake House of Prayer) here in Mwanza, Tanzania.

The opening will be on 20 Nov. 2016 on which we will celebrate Eucharist with an official pronouncement of our opening followed by food (the Bishop is providing a cow and 100 kilos of rice). We’ll probably have 100 plus guests so we’ll need to rent a few tents/chairs and have the event outside.

Bishop Ruwai’chi has granted my request to give the House of Prayer canonical status which basically means we will be free to operate as an independent entity within the Church. He will make this public at our Opening.

The blessings continue to flow into our lives here to make the Vision of a House of Prayer a reality. I am grateful and humbled to witness it happening.

 

Yesterday I meet with Mr. Chasa the contractor who built our new House of Prayer. We officially signed a paper stating the construction was complete and the house is now totally in our possession. We still have a debt for the addition of the basement that I hope to pay off in Jan. 2017. It says a lot for our relationship that the building continued without interruption with the promise to repay the loan for the building of the basement at the beginning of the year.

Mr. Chasa is also a highly trained engineer so I ask him to look at how we can put in a drainage system that would protect both houses. When it rains the water floods down the steep sloop of the hill we are on and causes a lot of damage. We measured out the area and he will be getting back to me with a plan.

 

Judy and I made a change in our hospitality plan by widening our menu to include meat. Originally, we weren’t going to serve meat in hopes of creating an environment that brings the body  into stillness and prayer. We discovered something I ought to been aware of, that serving meat in this culture is very much expected. It is a sign of respect and good hospitality for one’s guests.

This insight is also moving us to be aware that our menu fits into the cultural expectations of what is served at table. For example instead of cereal for breakfast one can eat boiled sweet potatoes. Or instead of potatoes for dinner one eats ‘ugali’ (a thick mixture of corn and cassava).

The important thing is to provide people who visit us as sense of feeling at home. This comfortable environment hopefully will invite our guests into the stillness and silence of Our Lord.

 

We continue to wait for the electric company to come a hook up our electricity. Part of the difficulty is we had to change the wiring from one phase to three phase, which is more powerful. When we finally do get hooked up we will not have to deal with the electric company again because we will be able extend the 3 phase system to other buildings to be built in the future ourselves. So for now  I continue to live in my house where we pray and have Mass on most mornings.

Our Silent Prayer groups in the mornings and evenings are attracting more people. Judy, who is here from Language for a short break and I  are always impressed by the people’s stillness and motivations. These are people of simple but profound faith who are wonderful in the stillness and silence.

For the first few years of my 30 yrs living in Tanzania when a person came up to me and said, “I have a problem with you” I would take it personally and ask myself the reactive question, “You have a problem with ME!?” What did I do to you? I haven’t ever seen you before and you have a problem with ME!? These questions would rapidly go through my mind.

What the person is really saying is ‘I have a problem and I need your help in solving it’. Yesterday after morning mass a teenaged girl came up to me and said, ‘I have a problem with you’. After 30 yrs of struggling with this I’m finally finding enough space to re-translate what is being said. So we sat down so she could explain what her problem was.

She explained that at her high school there are students who play with evil spirits and these spirits are causing her problems, i.e. pain in her arms, neck and chest. After looking at the many possibilities of what could be giving her these problems I offered  some advice on how to deal with the  dark spirits and prayed for her.

So many times one does not solve the person’s problem but  creating the interior space to listen non-judgmentally and compassionately is helpful. After all sharing one’s problem with another is healing in itself.

Our prayer community is beginning to regroup nicely after Judy’s and my absence for the last two months. They continued to meet as a small group though to keep the prayer alive here while we were gone.

We are getting a few new people who come to pray with us. Last week at Evening prayer during the time all are invited to give petitions a young woman who I never saw before prayed. She prayed that she would be gifted by God to pray well to help her with her life.

I thought of the disciples asking Jesus to teach them to pray. Myself, I have the  same request as that young woman, to learn to pray in a way I come to know God, as God is and my true self as my true self is in God.

In a land with so many poverty, developmental and political issues one could ask what is the contribution of a House of Prayer? This is a challenging question of course. I would answer, the fundamental issues for Tanzanians are interior ones (like any human being). The deep fear that resides in us interiorly can only be healed by contemplative prayer.

 

For the most part our House of  Prayer is not known to the wider public but as we continue with our preparations for receiving overnight guests after finishing the construction of the new building we want the word to get out.

Yesterday, it got out big time. I attended the Eucharistic celebration that our Bishop Yuda Tadea lead as part of his pastoral visitation at our outstation. The mass was attended but a large congregation which enjoyed a lively liturgy.

After the liturgy while sharing a meal in the church with the bishop the bishop told us that he  would like to pass by the House of Prayer on the way to the parish. I thought he was speaking of coming with his one car with its 4 passengers.  Four cars and vans came with over 50 people from different parts of the parish who were accompanying the bishop on his visit.

I was able to explain to the group the nature of our House of Prayer and take them through the house. Now we’re known and a new era is starting for us where individual retreatants and small groups will be asking to come. This is what we are here for, to share the contemplative life of the Church, by providing the space of silence, simplicity and solitude for our people. The challenge is to guard and foster this contemplative atmosphere as people start to come.

Yesterday a young girl of 12yrs came to my house early in the morning with her grandmother(a regular here) and her mother. The girl is troubled with recurring headaches and stomach pains for awhile. They have taken her to the hospital without any improvement. They have also went to the Charismatics at a neighboring parish.

When she is prayed over by the Charismatics she falls to the ground during the prayers but later the headaches and stomach pains return. They tell me they don’t know what is causing these conditions; Is it the Devil? Is it a dark spirit?

The girl does not want to talk very much. After some conversation I suggest trying another hospital for testing. Then I pray for her, with some words of God’s Love and Concern for her. I place my hands on her head and in Silence ask the Lord for healing. Everyone seems satisfied, even the girl. I hope she felt God’s Presence and Love for her. That one  day she will find relief from her illnesses.

This is the third day I’ve been waiting for TANESCO, the electricity company to hook the newly completed house with power. TANESCO gets a lot of abuse for poor service and yet when one looks at the monumental demands placed on it in a rapidly growing economy one marvels at how well it is doing.

We’re using the rain water tank in the house I am living in to supply water to the new house. It has not rained in months and the city water has been spotty at the least.

All these things, waiting, saving water, are part of the spiritual practice of living contemplatively. And for me, the harder part.