Updates from Fr. Paul Kapochina

Wishing You a Promising August

It has been some time now since you last heard from me. I am doing very well and by the grace of God, I am strong and very busy with my pastoral work that calls me to give thanks to God every day for these many graces he showers on me every day.

It is my prayer that this message finds you swimming happily in the pool of good health and abundant strength to carry out your work.

I just returned from my annual retreat, which took place at the diocesan spiritual renewal center. We stayed there in silence for six full days reflecting on the theme The Joy of the Priesthood. It was very intense because we spent more time in prayer than listening to the retreat preacher. The retreat preacher helped us to understand that failures are part of life, but failures should not lead us to despair for the greatest sin is despair. The joy of the priesthood should be more about appreciating your successes both past and present and being optimistic of the future. In other words we should be people of hope.

Reflecting on my success story, I cannot claim any credit for myself but to you who have been the source of support to help me achieve much in the area of the care of the poor and needy. In light of this, I want to inform you that I did pray for you deeply and presented your needs to God every day during the Eucharistic celebrations, uniting your sacrifices (support) that you sent through me to the poor people with that of Jesus’ sacrifice of himself.

I came home to see most of the crops submerged in water. The rains have hardly started but have been so heavy that the people are beginning to complain because their mud buildings are almost falling and their crops are dying under the water. This is a cause of worry because most of those living along the rivers have lost everything and are beginning to ask for support in forms of grain to prepare food. This condition has also brought along sickness like diarrhea and malaria as a result of the mosquitoes breeding in the water. I wish we have the technology to harvest all this water for irrigation because in the next three weeks if it doesn’t rain, we will begin to face drought.

God bless you abundantly. Fr. Paul Kapochina