Padres

The largest religious group in our community, and the one we are most associated with, is the Catholic Church. Our town has a diversity of churches, including two Jehovah's Witness meeting houses, the revival style Assemblea de Deus (Africano), several churches associated with the Presbyterians, many small family churches often times consisting only of a mud hut with grass mats to sit on, and a new mosque, complete with minarets to call the Muslim faithful to prayer.  We also have traditional animists, like the Nyau, but they don't usually have formal houses of worship, and often times many also belong to a formal religion.  About half the residents in our town, several teachers, and all of our immediate neighbors, are members of the Catholic parish.  Luc goes every Sunday we're in site, and although Janet's attendance is more sporadic, the whole town counts us among the faithful.  We often get prayer requests from people too sick or just too busy to attend a particular Sunday service; lately the main item has been for prayers to pass national exams.  Over the course of the year we have developed a friendship with our parish priests.  Although our town had a religious community during the Portuguese era, their house is now derelict and semi-abandoned; the three fathers now all live at the São João Bautista Mission in the district seat, about two hours away, so we only get official masses about once a month.  Two of the fathers are Mozambicans, originally from our very town, and the head father, Ricardo, is Chilean, but has lived in country for almost 15 years now.  They are part of the Silesian community, and associated with Don Bosco, so they specialize in working with youth and actively engage the community.  They have a primary school, a community radio, agriculture and carpentry projects, computer training programs, and are currently building a sports facility.  They also bring over missionaries and volunteers, mainly from Latin America.  We've helped give HIV/AIDS training for their groups of youth activists. They've also given us lots of support.  When one of our flights back to Tete arrived after dark, they put us up at the mission and even met us at the airport.  We enjoyed sharing meals with the padres, praying together, and sharing stories about our different projects with the community.   Plus, the Padres always have amazing food.