It has been over three months since I paid the fees to get hooked up to the Water Department. During this entire time, no water, until today! It would be easy to use the standard reasons for the delay, corruption, inefficiency, laziness, etc. Perhaps. But when one looks at the tremendous challenges of a growing by leaps and bounds city, one can marvel that the Water Department can keep up with the demand. Either way the long wait is over. We have water from the Water Department.

As far as the building is concerned, we have one last major job to do before the first phase of the construction of the Core Community House is completed, we need to pour the floor. We are planning to do this in a couple of days. This job needs a lot of water. Perhaps the Water Department knew this. Knowing it or not. We have water abundantly now, from God (rain water)  and from our beloved Water Department (piped water). Either way, one is thankful.

People when they come up to the House of Prayer comment on the road. It is a steep, winding, narrow road that passes, like a camel trying to go through an eye of a needle, through humble dirt and cinder block houses lined on either side of the road. One can easily start a conversation with the people sitting outside their homes, usually on rocks.

The road is full of people walking, motorcycles, chickens, goats, an occasional cow, cars, vans, bikes, the list can go on. It can be quite a show to just watch the multi-faceted scene unfold before you but one doesn’t for fear of running over a chicken.

The rains and constant heavy traffic are creating conditions on the road where one can see the day where it will be impassable. What to do when your road goes out? My plan is to somehow get my car to the parish below in the valley and keep in there until the road gets fixed. I’ll just walk down to my car, probably a 20 minute walk. Life will slow down, which  may not be so bad after all.

Finishing the basement

When I lived in the villages for off and on for ten years whenever in rained hard one always had to relook at his plans, especially depending on the condition of the roads. Our road coming to the House of Prayer is getting eaten up by the heavy rains. Where I would make two, three trips up and down our road in one day to go to mid-town in past, now I just plan to do everything that I can in one trip. It is the mentality I had in the villages, go slow, and try and get all that you can done in one trip.

The rains have slowed down the building a bit, but not much. The building crew is working hard and getting quite wet at times. We are now preparing the forms to pour concrete for our floor of the Core Community House.

The rains have filled up my 10,000 liter water tank but I can’t pump the water up to my house tank because the electricity keeps going off.

We had nice group of children, women and men for our weekly Meditation Group at the House of Prayer. I usually give a short teaching, we sing a chant style song and meditate for 15 minutes. At the end I used a book called, ‘Praying with our Bodies’.

I guided the people in simple exercise of just standing up straight, bringing awareness to our breath, the Spirit within and our blessedness before God. I was uncertain how the folks would  respond, they loved it.

On another front, the building progresses on schedule. Next week we will pour the floor of the Core Community House and the top of the water tank.

As St. Teresa of Avila said, “We are not angels (we have a body)”. I am thankful we can also pay attention to the outer forms of vision and spirit as we bring awareness to our bodies and homes.

There are many questions for Missioners during this era. How do we move to the back of the bus so to speak and instead of leading the local church, be a servant of it. The Lake House of Prayer is an effort to bring something new to this local Church of Mwanza, Tanzania, as a servant, and not a leader.

The Church is pretty well established, with full churches, indigenous clergy and leadership in all areas. I feel the responsibility to offer something that the Church here needs, Silence, Solitude in the Contemplative Tradition of the Church.

The question to be lived into is, “Do the people want this, really?” After 15 months working on the House of Prayer, I would say, I’m not sure. Right now the challenges are explaining and doing Contemplation in a manner the people here can respond to it. After all it is something new, as far as what the Church has shared with the people. But within the African culture itself there are deep places of Silence and Solitude. This something new is really something very very old.

Putting in the Basement floor

As you can probably see from the pictures on the website the construction of our Core Community House is continuing pretty much on schedule. Because of the steep slope of the hill we’re building on we discovered room enough to add a basement (see picture) which costs more but thanks to donor support and Maryknoll, doable.

The water tank is also coming into shape (see picture). Now the big discussion is what kind of pump to put in, in the tank or outside? The water department actually came by the other day(we have not had water ever since had our system installed) to check on why we haven’t been getting water.

Through it all, we give thanks to God and your support.