Mission life and work in Africa is rain on a metal roof, a parish compound,
cooks and houseboys (women domestics are the exception in rectories),
windstorms, flooded rivers, muddy roads — often impassable, Legion of Mary
meetings, balky carburetors and flat tires, walking miles for a gallon of
petrol, kerosene lamps, all night drums, big feasts like Christmas and Easter,
catechumens staying at the mission just before baptism, rosary in the homes of
the people and visitors from the neighboring mission.        

    Most of all, it’s the people.  Parish life is the closeness you feel to families
with whom you have very deep, real, lasting friendships so that you no longer
feel like a foreigner and outsider, friendships which in the first days you
never dreamed possible.  It’s the joyful reaction of small children proud
because you greeted them by name.  It is talking to youngsters about what
happened to their front teeth, the names of their cows, their toys ingeniously
constructed from whatever is handy.  It is talking to the grownups especially
the elders, and quickly learning that they have plenty of sensible insights to
happy and peaceful living.  It is talking to people about things like cotton and
corn and mud and rain and sun –and talking about these things for hours.
   

   
Mission life is entering into the problems of all you meet, from the youngest to
the oldest, from morning ’til evening, teaching them things you yourself may not
believe with as much faith as you would wish — like trusting in a good God who
will give us all we need.  Mission life in Africa is certainly joy and laughter
which is the absolute condition of our relationship, for when we are with the
people we automatically enter into their joy.  And joy is Africa’s great gift to
the Church.