The Journey to Moshi, Tanzania

Asher Kaufman, age 18, set out on June 28 for a yearlong trip to help spread the Children's Rosary in Europe and Africa. He spent the months of July, August and the first two weeks in September in France. He arrived in Uganda on September 15. From Uganda he traveled by car to Rwanda on September 28. After a week in Rwanda there was once more a return for more travel in Uganda. On October 11 he arrived in Tanzania. Asher grew up helping the Children's Rosary and participating in it. He now is helping to spread the Children's Rosary to more parishes and schools. He is also discerning a vocation to the priesthood and has applied to the seminary through the Archdiocese of Hartford. Please keep both his trip and his vocation in your prayers. He has been sharing dispatches from the trip.  

"Where Fr. Sheejan dropped me off on Monday was the House of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Mombasa. This is a community of sisters in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the United States, and beyond. They have a very nice community in Dar es Salaam with a school and a clinic they just opened a few weeks ago. This is the House I went to. I had been put in contact with the sisters by Fr. Kalua, who has helped us tremendously with the Children’s Rosary in his diocese in southern Tanzania. They had said they could help me get to Moshi from Dar es Salaam.

Sr. Yasinta helped me to buy a bus ticket; I did not even know there were buses that ran between the two places, but indeed there are. They put me up for the night and helped me to find the place the bus left from at 4:30 the next morning. Sr. Yasinta even accompanied me on the bus to that I would make it there without any trouble.

I must say that that this point, as we were leaving Dar es Salaam on the bus, was one where I felt very uncertain about how the day would end. Fr. Sheejan had told me about a school I should visit along the way that had contacted me about him, but I did not know how to get from the town where the school was the rest of the way to Moshi. Further, I did not even know where we would spend the night when we did arrive in Moshi. Well, I thought, this is real missionary work.

The place we stopped in was called Same; we stopped because the nun in charge had contacted Fr. Sheejan regarding me and their need for rosaries, so I decided to pay a visit and also introduce the Children’s Rosary. It was a very nice visit; the school is called Assisi School, and it is run by some Ursuline Franciscan sisters who originally arrived from India in 2004. They have a primary school and a residence for some secondary school students who study nearby.

Upon arriving, we were invited to have some lunch by the nuns, and I met there Fr. George, a priest who lived about an hour away in a parish on the road to Moshi. He very kindly offered to give us a lift to Moshi. He invited me to his parish and school to see the students and facilities, and I was very impressed with the campus. I met his pastor, and then we continued on our way.

Once we reached Moshi, we met up with Fr. Asantebwana, the educational secretary for the Diocese of Moshi. Fr. Ruwaichi had asked him to put me up for the night, so it looked like I had somewhere to sleep after all. Fr. Asantebwana took me to his parish, which was up at some altitude; in fact, it was rather chilly, quite unlike Dar es Salaam. Fr. Asantebwana told me he had been the parochial vicar at a parish in Columbus, Ohio, from 2017 to 2021. He told me how he had come to love American football and the Steelers in particular. I must say, after traveling in different parts of the globe for a few months now, it is rare to find someone not from North America who watches or understands American football, and it is still less common to find someone who appreciates it. It was like a little reminder of home.

The fact I ended up staying with Fr. Asantebwana was also providential because we had been trying to get an appointment with him to talk about the Children’s Rosary for some time, and here right at the last minute I ended up staying the night with him!

The next morning, I attended Mass at his church at 6:30 followed by breakfast. He showed me around the new church facility that has been under construction since 2023. They had managed to raise funds to get as far as they are, which includes the concrete walls and foundation but are looking for more to continue.

Around midmorning, we took Sr. Yasinta over to a nearby convent where she wished to visit and from which she would proceed home. Then Fr. Asantebwana took me up to a favorite spot of his on top of a hotel from which one has a bird’s eye view of Moshi. It was splendid, and I would have been able to see Mt. Kilimanjaro quite well, but it was cloudy.

From there, Fr. Asantebwana (shown below) handed me over to Fr. William Ruwaichi, with whom I stay until Oct 17. Fr. Ruwaichi is the former educational secretary, and we had visited him in 2019 during our trip to East Africa."

To see all of Asher's dispatches from his journey click HERE

The picture at the top of this post is the Cathedral in Moshi, Tanzania