Resurrection Formation House

I mentioned that Stephen is a volunteer from Poland who is helping the seminarians with computer skills. Stephen has been a great addition to our community and regularly pitches in to help in many ways. Here, Stephen is helping Anord and Sylvester with the computer.

Stephen is also an accomplished photographer and shared his photos with me to use. He took many great photographs of our formation house property so I thought I would use this edition to give you an idea of “home” for us in Tungi, a small village just outside of Morogoro. Some of the photos were taken with his drone!

From this aerial photo, you can see that our property sits beside part of the Tungi village (on the left) and the Blessed Sacrament Sisters’ property (on the right and behind). There is an open field opposite the front of our property. The narrow road that runs past our house into the village is called Resurrection Road…at least, we call it Resurrection Road. It is not a “real” or “official” road and at times there are some minor disputes about space that the narrow road takes.

You can hear the children from the Blessed Sacrament primary school when they are playing at recess, but otherwise there is not too many sounds coming from that direction. Since many family homes are close to the wall of our property on the left, you can hear many sounds of family living coming from this direction. This is not too much of a problem because the volleyball court, parking garage, laundry area, and garbage area are on our side of this wall.

This aerial photograph provides a good view of the different buildings on the property. The entrance gate is at the top right corner of the property. Once you enter the gate and travel straight ahead, you pass a building that is on your right. This building has my suite and a guest suite, the dining room, and the kitchen. My room is at the front, taking up the first two windows.

As you make the turn to the left, you see our new two-story building that was completed last year (white roof). It has six rooms, each with a bathroom, with a maximum capacity for 12 seminarians. There is also a suite which Fr. Daniel lives in and two small meeting spaces. The water tank sits on top. The water is pumped into the tank from the well and then gravity takes over as the water is distributed among the buildings.

As you continue straight, you pass the large residence building for the seminarians on your right. As you enter this building, there is a meeting/recreation space with a television. There are eight rooms, with a maximum capacity for 16 seminarians. There are two more rooms at the end of the hall, each of which has a bathroom. These rooms provide some flexibility, as we can use them as guest rooms, or have one or two seminarians live in each one. In total, we could house 20 seminarians in this building. At the very end of the building are the showers and washrooms, as well as some storage rooms. Traveling further will take you to the open garage where we can park three vehicles under the roof.

The chapel is situated in the middle of the property. This photo (above) was taken early in the morning on a misty day. The photo (below) gives a good perspective of the chapel amid the property.

From the perspective of this photograph, you can see the Blessed Sacrament Sisters’ property which sits to the right and behind our property. I would say that their property is four or five times the size of our property. The buildings in the top right corner are the buildings of the primary school that the sisters run. They use the field behind us for farming, mostly corn, and they use the area to the right of us for their gardens, which include orange, lime, lemon, and grapefruit trees. You can see (below) the village of Tungi that surrounds us to the left.