The Holy Cross Mission Center is pleased to share written reflections from the Holy Cross participants in the 2024 Ganguly Exchange, an eight-week international ministry opportunity available to the U.S. Province’s men in formation. Their stories from Bangladesh, Kenya, Mexico, and Peru offer a window into the Congregation’s missionary charism.

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“Hearts Fit for the Kingdom”

By Robert Weltner, C.S.C.

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Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Mt 18:3-4 (NABRE)).

This call from Jesus to humility and childlikeness has always been one of those scriptural passages that really sticks with me. The older, more educated, and more sophisticated we become, the greater the risk that our hearts drift from the childlike ideal that Christ places before us. In our moments of success and advancement, we are tempted to become more self-absorbed and to increase our feelings of self-importance, and in our moments of misfortune, we are tempted to lose faith and wallow in despair. Regaining a vision of what the heart of a child is like and desiring that God rekindle such a heart within us are truly salvific movements in our lives. 

My recent summer placement in East Africa was an opportunity to regain a bit of my vision for what a childlike heart looks like and to be won over by the beauty and joy of children’s hearts that seemed fit for the Kingdom of Heaven. 

As a participant in the U.S. Province’s Ganguly Exchange Program, I spent two months living and serving in a poverty-stricken area of Nairobi, Kenya called Dandora. Situated in the center of Dandora (and approximately 200 yards away from Holy Cross Parish-Dandora where I was living) is Nairobi’s principal dumping site, which receives approximately 2,000 tons of unsorted and unregulated waste per day. This thirty-acre dump site is the largest in East Africa and one of the largest in the entire continent, and it poses severe health and safety risks to the local population. For 45 years, Holy Cross has been serving the people of Dandora, and the Congregation’s compound in the heart of the community has a church, school, medical clinic, and self-help center that supports those in financial need.

While in Dandora, I taught computer classes at our primary school and I assisted with various liturgies both in the main church and throughout the surrounding slums. On my first day at the school, I received a handwritten note from a fourth-grader who simply said, “Dear Teacher Bobby, I am glad to have you as my computer teacher. You know we have not had a computer teacher in years.” Reading the note was simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking – heartwarming in its expression of gratitude and heartbreaking in the child’s previously unfulfilled longing for an education.

As I reflect on my summer, that note was emblematic of much of what I experienced in Dandora, especially in my interactions with the children at St. James Primary School. I observed many fundamental needs going unmet or underserved, and yet I simultaneously encountered children with sincere gratitude, deep faith, persistent hope, and undeniable joy. Each day these young students arrived at school joyful and eager to learn. School is the greatest place on earth for them – it is a safe place where they can find reliable meals, caring teachers, and the hope of resurrection that their education represents.

My fondest memories of my time in Dandora will be the simple moments I spent walking around the school property and greeting the children with high fives. Through these brief interactions with the children, I wanted the children to feel loved and seen, but in turn, I feel as if I received a yet greater gift from them. I received a renewed vision of what a childlike heart fit for the Kingdom of Heaven looks like. 

Despite their poverty, these children live each day with faith, hope, and love. Many of them start their school days by making private visits to the chapel before reporting to homeroom. Then they humbly go about their learning with a genuine form of joy that I believe only comes from the Holy Spirit. Many are the potential reasons for despair in Dandora, but these children – with hearts seemingly fit for the Kingdom – smile in a manner that only speaks of hope.

Learn more about Holy Cross in Kenya

Published: October 11, 2024