By the river Ruzizi

I write this as St. Matthew's begins to celebrate the 10am liturgy.  If I had a computer today, versus my phone, I would upload the wonderful pictures and video from this service.  It may look like we are doing a lot of sightseeing, and in a way of speaking that would be correct.  Since this is primarily a fact finding mission less direct work and more networking is involved.  The people here are deeply in love with their country, and hopeful for its future, so they wish to show us all of it.  This includes the worst of it as well. I have never met a more generous people in all of my travels.  They truly give, without the thought of it being a quid pro quo. Today began with the Mass at Holy Spirit Catholic Church.  I was asked to vest in an alb and join the altar party. It was the most glorious Mass I have ever attended.  The singing was magnificent and spirit filled.  The church was filled to capacity and the children were given places of honor in the front of the Nave. I found myself tearing up several times in the service.  Two of those times were following the reading of the Gospel and at the Consecration.  Each time spontaneous applause burst forth from those gathered.  This was not lead by the clergy, but by the people for whom the Gospel is real and the Eucharist powerful.  I wonder when the last time I applauded for the Gospel was, you? Before the dismissal, I was invited to say a few words and after passing on greetings from Springfield Diocese and St. Matthew's, remarked that if St. Paul had written today he would have said, "In Christ there is no East or West, no North America or Africa, no American or Burundian, but brothers and sisters united in the love and grace of Christ."  Today, I saw what real catholicity looked like as we communed together. After breakfast, the Frs. Emmanuel, Clement, and Claude took us to the national park to see the Hippos.  We saw several swimming placidly in the Ruzizi river.  We then went to the village just north of the park and were swarmed by choose children shouting "muzungo" which means white person.  We had great fun laughing, singing, and taking pictures together.  The poverty is extreme, but there was a joy of life that, to me, seems to be lacking in our much more prosperous culture.  The poverty here is not due to a lack of initiative, hard work, or care, but lack of opportunity and training in basic economic activities. Yet, we can also learn to be appreciative for small things from our Burindian friends. We learned a bit of dependence today when through a communications failure we ran out of Francs.  Our hosts, the priests, insisted that we accept their hospitality for refeshment on the beach of Lake Tanginikya.  We were told that it would be good for us to be dependent, and it was both a blessing and a bit humbling as they bought from every child who was selling refreshment, so that they "could earn some money." Tomorrow we meet foe dinner with a Catholic Bishop who oversees Fr. Emmanuel's work. The goal of the meeting is to explore ideas of how we could potentially cooperate to improves the quality of life of the rural parishes, without providing direct aid. One possibility is cooperating with Anglican and Catholic parishes and training local clergy in raising rabbits for protein and breeding stock.  The clergy would then train the residents of the parish and provide breeding stock from their production.  This could both feed a high protein meal to folk as well as providing the beginnings of an economic development as the city is always in need of meat. To begin a feasibility study, I think we will build a hutch tomorrow.