Driving my Toyota truck to the distant outstation of
Kemugongo, Tanzania 

To celebrate the Easter Liturgy during the rainy
season.

Halfway across a swampy plain the mud becomes so thick
that

I have to abandon my truck and walk the remaining one
and a half miles

in ankle-deep mud during a light rain. 

I arrive at the outstation chapel wet, dirty and tired.

The local Christians run toward me clapping and dancing
with joy. 

"The Padri has come.  We will have Mass," they shout.

Immediately I forget my wet, muddy clothes and my
tiredness.

I get caught up in the enthusiasm of the people

as we prepare to celebrate the Easter Eucharist,

Christ’s resurrection, the central event in our
Christian faith. 

As I look out at the happy, excited faces in that
outstation community

I realize in a flash what Maryknoll in mission is all
about.

This makes it all worthwhile!           

 

I accompany a young married Tanzanian couple 

As they regularize their marriage in Iramba Parish.

Baptize their first-born child , a baby girl

named after my deceased mother Virginia.

Moving to another parish I often wonder:

How is their marriage, Christian life, children?

Then in the first grade Virginia writes me her first
letter

filled with scribbling and drawings and love.

This makes it all worthwhile!

 

Chacha, the chairperson of the Iramba Catholic Centre
Council,

Gets caught in a complicated legal battle over cows.

The court case sends him unfairly to jail in Mugumu.

We grieve and talk and talk and grieve.

Trips to the court, to the judge, to the prison.

Endless attempts to get him released, then silence.

One day he suddenly appears at the rectory and shouts:

“I am home, I am free.”  We rejoice.

This makes it all worthwhile!

 

While working in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

I send several Catholic bishops

Copies of articles and reports on missionary topics.

For months and even several years there is

No reply, no thanks, no acknowledgement.

I begin to wonder if I am wasting my time.

Then by chance the Bishop of Bukoba sees me

at the Catholic Secretariat and says:

"Oh, thank you for all the material you send.

I never get a chance to write and thank you.

But I read everything.

Please keep it coming.”

This makes it all worthwhile!           

 

Attending the ordination to the deaconate of Sabinus
Moremi

at Segerea Seminary in Dar es Salaam in January, 1999

we talk about his 14-year journey. 

How his vocation to the priesthood all started

by filling out the application forms

when he was in Standard 7

and I was Pastor at Iramba Parish in Musoma Diocese.

Then the long years through high school seminary,
Formation Year,

philosophy, theology, Pastoral Year, final year of
theology. 

He reminds me that when he first went to the seminary

I gave him a book with an inscription that said:

”My prayers will accompany you on your journey to the
priesthood.” 

He has remembered this all these years.

So have I.

This makes
it all worthwhile!