Isohe Mission Trip Preparation Visit

Last weekend Dennis, Maynor and I made a trip to the beautiful mountain village of Isohe, one of the communities in which the Comboni missionaries served decades ago, and built a beautiful church surrounded by mountains.

We arrived early Friday afternoon, in plenty of time to participate in the Way of the Cross in the parish.

Isohe is a unique community in the diocese. It is a small village, yet is home not only to St. Theresa Parish, but also to a convent of Sacred Heart Sisters, St. Kizito Catholic Primary School (which has 1,300 students, 1000 of which are boarders!), St. Augustine Catholic Secondary School, St. Theresa Mission Hospital and AVSI, an NGO connected with the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. It's a real Catholic enclave! It was wonderful to see the sisters, so many students and teachers from both schools, as well as hospital employees, participate in this Lenten devotion.

On Saturday morning we met with representatives from the parish and both schools to discuss and plan for the Bread of Life Eucharistic Youth Retreat scheduled for the last weekend in May as part of the upcoming mission team visit.

After the meeting, in a moment of temporary insanity, I allowed Maynor and Dennis to convince me to join them in climbing the most prominent peak of the mountains that surround the village. Justin, a seminarian from the parish, was our guide. The view of the mountain from the village makes it appear as a single cone or peak, but from another vantage point it becomes clear that there is a smaller peak at the base of the larger cone. After an hour of pretty steep climbing we made it to the smaller peak, and it was pretty clear that to ascend the sheer cone of the taller peak was beyond our abilities.

Click to enlarge

Still, the panoramic view even from the lower peak and the perspective on the village below were breathtaking.

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