After the presentations, clarifications were accepted, followed by group work, until 1.00 pm. In the afternoon two topics were presented, as an introduction to group work, i.e. community life, personal and community prayer and Eucharist.
The Formators from Allamano House of Nairobi organised for us the liturgy of this day.
25/5/2007
On this second day we continued our work, with the presentation of the situation of our seminary of philosophy located in the same countries as cited above.
We are all ready and eager to hear the experience of our centres of philosophy.
Kenya is the leading region in terms of numbers of students in philosophy, 91, followed by Congo 32, Tanzania 24, Mozambique 9, and Ethiopia 2. We have come to know more about the diversity of each seminary context and the reality in which each of them are, but all of them are striving to form candidates according to both the spirit of the church and the imc, as stipulated in our Ratio Formationis, N 71. The groups continues to share the experiences, related to this stage of formation, and they seems to be a very good forum for learning more more each other. All of us see the need to reinforce the Consolata seminary formation teams and especially the one of our philosophy of Kinshasa.
In the afternoon, two formators offer some input on the formative dialogue and the report to be written by the formators on each student; both of these tools are indispensable for our formation. The Tanzania team were in charge of the day liturgy, whose theme revolved around our call for more love of Christ, of our work, of the institute, of our young confreres and of God.
26/05/2007
This day was dedicated to our two noviciates in Sagana (Kenya) and Mobuto (Mozambique), d the Congolese team was in charge of the daily liturgy. The sharing is getting better and better, and each formator is sharing very interesting and, at times, innovating experience with the others.
Our noviciate of Mozambique has 9 novices of whom one Mozambican. This our house of formation is a tangible sign of consolation for the people living in its surrounding. In Sagana there are 16 noviciates of whom, 2 Ethiopians, 1 Ugandan and 13 Kenyans. We congratulate all our noviciate formative teams for their hard working spirit in this unique and special moment of the religious formation of our candidates.
Fr Marandu, the novice master of Sagana, will be leaving in July for a new appointment, while Fr. Albert Kathare, from the seminary of philosophy in Kinshasa, will be appointed novice master.
In the afternoon, there was some input from two participants on pastoral work during the week end, and long pastoral experiences during the holidays, and also on spiritual direction. The intercession during the mass were done in languages used in our different countries of mission.
27/05/2007
The African formators can’t go back to their respective country without visiting our first mission territory of the Institute in Kenya. We had a formative trip to Thuthu to visit this spot, to follow the footsteps of our brave and dear missionaries who founded the Thuthu mission. Here we prayed for the whole Institute. I do remembered quite well the chairperson of the parish who thanked us, by saying, “ the missionaries brought us the Good News, we are very grateful for that and thank God. Today again they came over here, missionaries from different countries: it is indeed Pentecost day, where people talk in various tongues”.
In his words of thanks, father Paco said, “Thuthu is in our memories, it is not some thing of the past, it something of the present, taking us into the future. It is here that everything started in Kenya. He also thanked the people who continue to welcome Imc missionaries.
On our way back, we visited Nyeri, Mathari and our future propaedeutic site in Nyeri. In the evening, Father Matthew Ouma, the general counsellor for Africa, joined us coming from S. Africa. We concluded our Pentecost Sunday by sharing a fraternal meal in the Sagana noviciate.
