Tumsifu Yesu Kristo, Milele Amina. / Praise be to Jesus Christ, Forever Amen. (Catholic Tanzanian greeting)
On their own, words cannot truly capture the magnitude of our experience in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, but I will attempt to provide a small insight into our 3 week mission work in East Africa, in the months of July and August of this year. We were a mixed group of eight missionaries, who are members of Kenosis Foundation. Therefore, there were benefactors, catechists, leaders and helpers.
We had a lot of opportunities to travel to different cities, yet our main stay was with the Carmelite Missionary Sisters of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, in Boko. Last year, divine providence allowed us to meet with one of their sisters in Gozo, and since then we have been working with them on the building of a formation centre adjacent to their convent in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. After several months of discussing the project, and coordinating funds for its purpose, it was a great fulfillment to see the advanced progress that had been made and the fruits in the lives of the young people who are using it
A beautiful blessing to share one Catholic faith
It is a beautiful blessing to share one Christian, Catholic faith with our Tanzanian sisters and brothers. We are connected together through the same Holy Spirit, living and working for His glory. Mungu ni mwema! / God is good! We shared our meals together with the sisters and exchanged good practices from serving in our different ministries within the foundation.
I remain impressed with the amount of genuine love and welcoming feeling that the people in Tanzania showed us! We constantly heard the meaningful phrase: Karibu / Welcome. Everywhere we visited, over 30 places, including: churches, schools, convents, seminaries, hospitals, homes, boarding schools, orphanages and others, everyone graced us with their tremendous joy through singing. It was truly an experience of God’s love, a heavenly encounter, each time we were welcomed with open arms and angelic voices.
The Catholic Church in Tanzania
I must also mention the persecuted church in the island of Zanzibar. The Christian/Catholic church there makes up only 1.2% of the population and the religious leaders are being violently attacked as well as the church buildings and homes. Yet, through God’s aid, the Carmelite Missionary sisters remain present to serve the Christian community. From a human aspect, it seems impossible to keep going amid the closed doors and targeted attacks, but with God’s strength, the priests, sisters and lay persons, continue to persevere by practising their faith.
Despite seeing people in hardships, we observed their surrender to God to carry them through their struggles. Christ is at the centre of their lives. As St Therese of Lisieux shares,
We must abandon the future into the hands of God
We also noticed that Christians in Tanzania give a lot of value to supporting the community where they live, often done through willingly offering donations to the church to continue its mission of evangelization and serving the poor. They participate in mass as it is a celebration in its true meaning, through powerful singing and cheerful clapping.
In this jubilee year of hope, each person we met brought us hope through their witness of God, whilst we also shared our hope with them through our visits and contributions. As James 1:22 encourages us, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.”
St Therese of the Child Jesus minds us that “Nothing is small in the eyes of God. Do all that you do with love.”. Thus, everyone can partake in this ‘little way’ of living by doing small things with great love.
Asante sana, Tanzania! / Thank you very much, Tanzania! As Saint Paul the Apostle, the influential missionary, says in Acts 18:21, “I will return to you again, God willing”.
