Yesterday we had our biggest rain in a very long while. January to March is supposed to one of the two big rainy seasons in Tanzania. We’ve had no rain to speak out since Dec 2014, until yesterday. It rained with lightening and thunder in the beginning then a gentle steady rain until the night.

Rain in a city like Mwanza which has very poor infrastructure, is a mixed blessing. It does not take long at all for a big rain to flood the streets. A extremely strong rain can flood the streams running through the city which in turn flood people’s homes. If it rains like this in the day time people have a chance to climb on top of their roofs. If it rains like this at night when people are sleeping, some are taken by the raging water to their deaths.

In my recent visits to the fishing village next to the House of Prayer I saw the corps drying up and dying. The people said this will be at hard year. One does not need to read a lot of the confirmed scientific data to see clearly that human activity is a major factor in changing the climate patterns of the earth. The challenge for the House of Prayer is to live up to its Mission Vision Statement of being a source of ecological friendly life for the people who are already very much affect by Climate Change.

This morning as the sun was just coming up we celebrated the first Eucharistic Liturgy at the Lake House of Prayer. We prayed underneath a big tree overlooking Lake Victoria. To my great surprise 40 Christians showed up. I was thinking that it would be me and our two guards. What a blessing to pray with so many people for the first mass.

I had a small table made which will double as an altar and office desk(after the mass). We spread out ‘mikeka'(hand woven mats) in front of the altar for the people to sit on the ground. Some sat on the surrounding rocks.

I had been preparing the liturgical gear for two weeks. I stuffed the chalice, paten, hosts, wine, candle, Bible, altar clothes in a duffle bag and placed it in the back of my car. But when I unloaded all the stuff I discovered I forgot the altar missal. I apologized to the people and I did my best to celebrate the mass without the book.

I very much enjoyed being outside and I think the people did too. They sat on the ground for the entire mass, like they do at their traditional feasts. And why shouldn’t we have enjoyed it, we were going back to the tradition of the first Christians, we were going back to the Old Africa.

Yesterday, I visited the homes in the Small Christian Community of St. Bruno as I continue to make the rounds of all the Small Christian Communities to introduce myself and get to know the people and the land better.

This area was, and still is to some extent. a poor fishing village. But that is changing and fast. The area is in great demand by people with a lot of resources. It is a picture postcard land of rocks, rolling hills with fantastic views of Lake Victoria. The poor fisherman here are not here because of the views, they here to survive.

As the area develops one gets a curious mixture of poverty and ostentatious wealth. Perhaps someday this poor fishing village will be totally bought out by the new money that is flooding into Mwanza. It the face of this possibility what can the House of Prayer do?

Firstly, it can be the place the marginated can have access to and feel at home at. They will not be able to even go inside the big hotel that is planning to be built in their village but they will be welcome to come to the House of Prayer to rest, reflect, pray and discern what they will do about their future. The House of Prayer is about Transformation in Christ which teaches the Contemplative Way of Being. A way that creates the space for the saving power of Christ which creates free people who can face the future challenges in their lives with confidence and peace.

This is Masumbuko (means trouble) who has been breaking big rocks to prepare for building

Some good news: I met with the Bishop a few days ago and he has agreed to buy the neighboring plot and house that is adjoined to the heart of our property. I will now be able to move into the house and live. Of course there is still a process of completing the deal. I hope it won’t be too long but things look good. I will be using all my funds from my personal donors to contribute to buying the house.

There is still a lot of hope to getting some financial support from Maryknoll. I have completed the steps to get government permission to build the staff housing. If and when this help comes through I can be living at the site to supervise the building. The goal is to build the foundation and a room with bath that I can eventually use.

The Bishop was also supportive of my desire to start celebrating Eucharist outside underneath a tree. Today I did some shopping for liturgical gear to be ready for the first Eucharist at the Lake House of Prayer on 16 Feb. I hope it doesn’t rain. Some say many will come, others say only a few. It doesn’t matter. We’re not about numbers. We’re about Transformation in Christ.

Yesterday I noticed that my spare tire was low on air so went to the garage that I always used when I was at Mabatini Parish. The owner of the garage Renatus was a former parish leader. He promptly took off the tire and sent it by foot to a local gas station to be worked on. Then the wait began. I was given a chair to sit among torn apart cars and parts.

Others were waiting also at various sections of the garage trying to find some shade from the warming sun in a place without a waiting room. No one shows any impatience as we wait for various things to be done to our cars. One never complains when waiting. One realizes that in this culture the need to be patient when waiting is important because there are many reasons things take longer to get done here.

After one hour I began to nod off to sleep on the chair(that night I did not get enough rest). Right away someone tells me, “wake up, don’t fall asleep” with a smile. But the message was heard by me. You need to wait with patience and class, so don’t get tired and be alert. Yes, waiting is an art here.

I think now is the time to make a prayer commitment to the land of the future House of Prayer. One does not need a building to start praying with the people. My idea is to make a small table built close to the ground for the altar. We would have ‘mikeka’ (woven mats) for people to sit on the ground. I already have a place picked out, under a large tree.

Now this would be the traditional setting for African prayer but it seems that people are taken up in modern buildings. I asked a woman yesterday what she thought if we had Mass under a tree. She laughed and said we have a church(not completed), so why pray under a tree?

Well, I have a good excuse, at the House of Prayer site we have no buildings so we have to pray under a tree. So the preparations continue, we need to level out the area under the tree since it is on a slope so people could be level with the ‘altar’ when they sit.

This has the chance to be my happiest time at the House of Prayer, just praying underneath a tree in the early African morning with Lake Victoria below us. Things have a tendency to get domesticated when one has buildings to take care of. Just having the beautiful African land be the building is enough. I think God would be pleased.

After 3 years I needed to renew my Tanzanian Driver’s License. I went down early to the Tanzanian Revenue Authority and climbed to the third floor. When I entered the room I sat in a cubicle and received the Christian greeting, “Tumsifu Yesu Kristu”(Let us praise Jesus Christ), the woman working there was one of our Christians. She told me that she need my passport (which I did not bring).

I came the next morning with my passport, early again to try and avoid the lines. I was served by another woman whom I didn’t know. She took my information and my picture and told me to go into another room to speak to another man who would call Dar es Salaam to confirm all was fine with my passport info. I struggled to get by the long line for another desk and found my man. He took my passport, made a copy of it, gave it back and told me to wait outside while he makes a call to Dar. I go outside to wait, and wait and wait, 45 minutes pass. Then another woman sees me and says “Tumsifu Yesu Kristu” and I reply “Milele Amina”(Forever Amen).

She take me to her office, takes my paperwork and asks me for 40,000 Shillings to pay the fee. She gives me her phone number and tells me not to worry and go on about my business because it could take awhile for the phone call from Dar to get back to us.

The next day (today) I called to find out that I gave my private tax number three years ago, not my passport number. This confused many things. The fee wasn’t paid, my pictures didn’t match up, the police did not approve all levels of my license. Poor Imelda had to run back and forth to the third floor(and she is an overweight woman/no elevator) several times to finally get things in order.

I still don’t have my license I have to get to the bank early tomorrow to pay the fee (I got the money back from Imelda). I tired to today but the lines were so long and I did not have 3 hours to spare. Imelda said to return in two days. So hopefully when I return, I’ll have my payment receipt, I’ll take another picture, probably wait another hour, then, again hopefully someone who knows me will come up to me in the waiting hall and say “Tumsifu Yesu Kristu” and hand me my new driver’s license.

I’ve lived in Tanzania for 26yrs now and it is still amazing to me how easy it is for me to lose the plot. The plot being visiting the people in their homes is the most important part of the story of being a missioner in Africa. One loses the plot in allowing ‘matters of consequence’ to flood into your life and overwhelm you. Meetings, going to the bank, shopping, more meetings, answering your emails, getting sick, just being plain lazy, fears, more meetings, goals, objectives, more meetings, celebrations, getting distracted, and on and on and on. One (I) can go months without having step into a ‘normal’ person’s house.

Last year when I first started serving the Sunday liturgies at the Ibanda outstation I promised to visit everyone’s home (if they were there on the day I passed by). We finished one section of the outstation Mtaa wa Mlimani (The Street of the Mountain) and two days ago we started on Mtaa wa Ziwani (The Street of the Lake).

I enjoyed it very much and discovered a lot. I always thought this area was only inhabited by well off people. To my surprise as we climbed around the many big rocks into the plains before the lake there is a whole village of poor fisherman and their families. We even went to one part of the shore where the fisherman were pulling in their nets for a catch (of fish). They welcomed me warmly. I would have bought some fish (I love fish) but it was getting dark and it looked like they would be pulling their nets for awhile.

For a Maryknoll Missioner it is important to never lose contact with the grassroots, with the folks. The demands of starting a House of Prayer are many and must be attended to. But the Kingdom of God is already present when us ‘normal folks’ get together and just enjoy each other’s company.

Why would someone want to build a House of Prayer that focuses on Silence and Solitude in a place like Africa when the needs of health care, the economy, politics, education, the family, social cohesion, fighting corruption and understanding between religions is so very great? A philosopher(can’t remember name) once said that all the problems in the world come from our failure to sit still in a room by ourselves. If we cannot learn the ancient practice of silent contemplation all our busy efforts to save the world will ultimately fail.

The source of all authentic progress/creation is the Divine and the entry into the Divine is Stillness and Silence. It is from the sacred space of Divine Stillness/Silence that creation happens, a creation that brings real progress for humanity.

I think I’ve already quoted the Jesuit Karl Rahner who said, “The Christian of the future will have to be a mystic, if he/she wants to be a Christian”. In a world gone insane with mindless activity and noise there is a need to answer the question, “Why Contemplation?” by saying that first, we contemplate to keep ourselves sane and secondly to participate with the Divine in bringing New Life to our planet.