I  received the news today that the deal has been closed to purchase our neighbor’s house/plot. The long wait is over. I will be able to move into my new home when I return from my Spiritual Direction studies in August.

We have a little over two weeks before I leave for the States to extend our fence to cover the new addition to our area. Also, while I am gone Ernesti, my assistant, who is also a very good carpenter, will be making my bed, desk, and chairs.

With a bit of luck and perseverance we will have piped water next week. I am also looking at getting solar panels for my energy needs when I return.

I’ve been without a ‘home’ since mid-2013, two years. A life of a missioner is like the song says, ‘like a rolling stone’. But even a missioner needs a stable home, if for awhile.

We are now just completing planting a large section of our ‘Msitu’ (forest). We were hoping to take advantage of the regular rains that have been around. But the rains appear to have left us. So we turn to the Water Dept. to provide us water,  but the  check I wrote to pay to have the water installed is still stalled at the bank. That means  we turn back to bringing the water in on our heads. Well, at least this gives some women badly needed income for their families.

I spoke to the Bishop’s secretary today and was informed that the papers are being drawn up to be signed by all involved so that the purchase of the plot and house can be finalized. Perhaps when I return from my trip(safari) to the States in August I can move into my new home.

The major component for a fruitful future of the House of Prayer will be the Core Community. This will be, God willing, a group of three to five people who will live together and provide two services for our guests. Firstly, they will provide the contemplative space, they will ‘hold the Silence’ for our guests. They will create, foster and protect the Solitude, Silence and Simplicity of our area.

Secondly, the Core Community will provide hospitality to our guests. We will ensure an environment that will encourage our guests to enter into the Solitude of their inner lives to discover God’s Unconditional Love. This  hospitality will also ensure a simple, clean, quiet room, good food, natural grounds to rest, a prayer schedule they are free to join and spiritual direction.

It is my hope that the community will be an integrated one, that is men, women, African, Western, priest, lay and religious men and women.

After a two year conversation-discernment with a Maryknoll Lay Missioner, Judy Walters, I am pleased to write that she will be joining me in the Spring of 2016 at the Lake House of Prayer.

Judy has extensive experience in the contemplative life in overseas  mission. She is also a trained nurse and spiritual director. I feel blessed at her coming and am hopeful that others who have this unique vocation to the  contemplative life will join us in the future.

Today I took a walk with a visitor to the lake lead by one of the Christian’s leaders, Christina. When we got to the lake we encounter fisherman pulling a large net to the shore. Later I learnt that it was  an illegal net they were using but even the illegal nets do no good these days because the fishing is very poor.

One wonders what these fishermen will do if and when there way of life is no longer viable. The fishermen’s thinking goes, that the fish in the lake will never run out. The lake itself is so large, the second biggest lake in the world, it must be eternal, as are its fish stocks.

But climate change, over-fishing and poor ecological management have created the possibility that one day there will be no fish.

We are getting a lot of rain these days. The streets get flooded(poor drainage). Mud flows onto the paved roads from the dirt feeder roads so that the paved roads have a thick cover of mud, that dries into dirt later. So how does the city get the streets clean since it does not own any street cleaning machines? By poor, sometimes, old ladies.

These women wear worn out blue cotton jacks and rubber shoes as they wade out into the narrow roads to sweep up the dirt by hand with their long-handle cleaning instruments. It is dangerous work as they have to dodge motorcycles, cars, trucks, makokotenis(hand pull carts), goats, daladalas(vans) and bicycles to clean the roads for us.

Mwanza has won the reward for the cleanest city in Tanzania for the past through years. But what’s clean is the major roads, where most people live it is not clean. Garbage is piled up for weeks at a time, sanitation is not a priority for it is more fashionable to give money for AIDS but not building toilets.

These women risk their lives for $3 a day to keep our roads clear for our increasingly fancy cars. They do this with true grit coming from unsanitary streets carrying the sickness in their stomachs as they clean the streets for our cars.

I am in the final stages of completing a promise to visit all the homes of the Christians living in the area of the Lake House of Prayer. I started visiting off and on since September of 2014. Yesterday I visited the home of Teresia. Teresia does not talk. She is a young woman of 25 yrs, who from the explanation of her mother has sickle cell anemia.

Teresia has big scab marks all over her face where she poured hot tea on herself. And she doesn’t talk, with anyone. Her mother says Teresia is troubled by evil spirits. She asks me to pray for her daughter. I agreed but before I pray for her I suggest that she take Teresia to see the mental health professionals at the large regional hospital. I offer her the possibility that God can heal Teresia through good mental health practices, that God heals our minds broken through our encounters with life.

Before I prayed for Teresia I told her that I knew she was there, and listening as I could tell by her quivering lip and the movement of her breath. I said I would pray for her in the silence, just as she was in the silence. I don’t know if my prayer helped but I do hope she knew I respected her silence and that one day she would feel safe enough to speak.

When one goes to a big ‘Sikukuu’ (celebration) regardless how many people are there, and there can be hundreds of guests, everyone eats. For someone coming to these occasions it is surprising to see how much is put on one plate. Rice, beans, meat, chicken, fish and more are carefully placed on one plate as a ‘mountain’ is formed.

There is a saying here, “The poor don’t get a holiday/day off”. Many of the people who come to these Church celebrations are poor people. Most get one half-way decent meal today. The ‘sikukuu’ gifts them with the opportunity to ‘filler-up’, for the first time in a long while to feel biologically satisfied after a meal.

We are thinking of building a large water tank because of the unreliable water pressure in our area. One day you get water, the next day none. So some days will be like a ‘sikukuu’, we will fill up our big water tank. Other days, nothing. One learns to be ready when the needed object comes because one is never quite sure when it will come again. So ‘Filler-Up” whether its one’s stomach or a water tank.

For the first time since we’ve been having Eucharist under a tree, we’ve been rained out. April is usually a very good month for rains. This year the first two weeks were unseasonably hot and people started talking ‘njaa'(hunger). I don’t know for sure if the rains are too late for producing a good crop but they do bring hope.

Speaking of water, I went to the Water Dept today to take steps in the process of bringing piped water to the House of Prayer. Maryknoll has granted some funds to the project so we will most likely start building the house for the Core Community in August after my return from a Summer Course in Spiritual Direction in Nebraska.

Unfortunately the water pressure is not good where we are. The people tell me a big mistake was made when the Water Dept did not build its large feeder tank high enough on our hills. They built it in the middle so the water pressure is very weak at times for those living above the tank, like we are. One does not take for granted that water will come when its needed, whether from the skies or the Water Dept.

 

For various reasons beyond my control I have not be able to actually start building. This has been a blessing in disguise. I now have the opportunity to discern more deeply what God is calling to me in this work, to be a contemplative and to share the Practice of Contemplation with the people. If I had started pouring concrete right away I may have been distracted from the Real goal of a the House of Prayer that of Solitude and Simplicity.

We plan on planting two hundred trees in one section of the House of Prayer. This is unusual in this growing city where everywhere one looks there are trees getting cut down and cement being poured in a unplanned rush to develop every piece of land in site.

This special area of nature at the House of Prayer will be a  place where many Tanzanians will feel the healing presence  of God. In the Silence, underneath the shade of a tree. God seeks to  heal us in many ways. Why not through some trees?