"The visit of Patriarch Theodore II of Alexandria and All Africa to our community of St Catherine in Acholinyek village where he consecrated our Church..."

 Simon Menya 

The visit of Pope and Patriarch Theodore II of Alexandria and All Africa to Uganda and to our community of St Catherine in Acholinyek village where he consecrated our Church. We are still out of word to describe the day and the significance of this event. The event was huge and by the grace of God it worked out well even within the shortest timeframe to prepare. This is because the Holy Spirt was there to fill the gap. 13 of 100 each seaters tents with their chairs hired, two bulls were slaughtered and additional 50Kg of beef was added to the other food like rice, cabbages, beans, fish, chicken, sweet potatoes etc to feed the over 1400 people who came to witness this historical Pope’s visit to this community.

A brieft description of this community:

This community is located a distance of 33km away from the city on dirt roads to get there. A community that was one of the war zone and formerly a home of rebel leader Joseph Kony who had his house under the mango tree, under this mango tree in 2019 turned into Church community, meeting place, teaching and learning of the children and adults etc. A community that is between two rivers with no access road now has a paved road and awaits putting bridges to connect to other communities. A community that now has a health clinic that serves over 8 villages. A community that started with a Church gathering under the mango tree before building a temporary Church and now the St. Catherine permanet and a beautiful Church building instils in the people spiritual nurturing, healings and upgrowth of minds and souls. A community that now has pig farm to empower groups of women mostly widows from the war who are in groups is now becoming a center for socialisation and also empowerment. This community with the help of the school is now a teaching and learning environment for our children. This is a community that does not discriminate any Non-Orthodox religious affiliated persons from accessing services set up here because we believe and know that we are all icons of God and created in His likeness. So we work and share everything together for everything belongs to God including us. We are happy and thank God for blessing us also with other projects like bee keeping project, water well providing access to clean water to the people as opposed to the old time where people drink from the two rivers. Our people farm the land and make a tithe of 10% of their harvest to support the Church and our school. This community struggled and struggles; and was not build over night but it took great sacrifice, perseverance, Faith, Love, Transparency, working together, learning from each others, teaching with integrity and example the 90% of the community peope who are on committees and runs these projects because they helped create it. As this community strives slowly toward becoming self sufficient and as we journey toward Great Lent, please remember St. Catherine community in your prayers. A lot and sincere thanks to everyone in my community for the very hard work to prepare for this day, sincere thanks for everyone’s prayers, love, kindness and everything that each of you do for us. We sincerely do love you all our dear brothers and sisters and you will forever be in our prayers with so much love in Christ.

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