Dear Father Seán,
Warmest greetings from Africa!
I’m trying to work double time making everything in order here and there for a smooth turnover to whoever will be taking over my work here as I go back to the Philippines for good. My role is really to stabilize the running of the Secondary School for Sisters, Mtwara, in southern Tanzania, and to train local people as much as possible who will continue running it. I can observe that they are gifted but need somebody to help them discover and develop their talents according to the task that will be delegated to them. They feel happy and very honored when entrusted with certain responsibilities, even without additional remuneration, which makes me feel so proud of them.
By Sr Mary Ignatius C Aquino OSB
Sister Ignatius, who has written before in these pages, tells of her experience in forming the first Tanzanian members of the Missionary Benedictine Sisters of Tutzing. This congregation, founded near Munich, Germany, opened missions in the Philippines and in Tanzania in 1906.
By Sr. Rosalinda Gonzales, mmm
Sr. Rosalinda is a missionary doctor who has been working in Tanzania for many years now. Together with her fellow Sister nurses and doctors, they run the Kabanga Hospital mostly overflowing with refugees – one of the perennial concerns of Africa. Here she tells us of a night of terror when armed robbers broke in into their convent.
By Sr. Rosalinda Gonzales mmm
I saw him
Lying in his bed in the Lower Block at Kabanga Hospital...
Alone.
By Sr. Mary Ignatius Aquino osb
From a Missionary Silver Jubilation
By: Sr. Julia Yap, OSB
“Lord you called us graciously to go your way,” was the verse of the song we sing twenty-five years ago when seven of us made our first profession. The above verse is still ringing in my ears now that I am preparing for my silver jubilee of profession.
I might well begin this story with my simple call to the religious life which I have heard a faint voice calling to follow Him way back thirty years ago. For a time I ignore the voice, but later on I could not resist Him and ended up with my radical, “Yes O Lord, I will follow you.” A year before I entered the convent of the Missionary Benedictine Sister of Tutzing in Manila I attended a vocation retreat which was conducted by a Jesuit father from Ateneo. He opened the eyes of my mind and the ears of my heart to listen to the call. That was a radical change of my life to leave home even without the consent of my father; to leave everything and begin my search for God.