While in Zambia, I was sent for a year of pastoral experience that was followed by four years of theological studies that I finished in November of 2018 and returned home for a holiday and my ordination.

In April this year, I landed on this beautiful land of the martyrs for my first mission as a missionary priest, I feel so blessed and delighted that just like me, Uganda was the first mission for two of our ancestors in faith servants of God Fr. Simeon Loudel Mapeera and Br. Delmas Amans. It is also this very year of my arrival that we shall be celebrating one hundred and fifty years of service as the Missionaries of Africa, which celebrations will be here in Namugongo.

Missionary life is a life in which one should be ready to accommodate challenges, difficulties and joys as well; just like the first group that was sent and arrived here in 1879 (who had to leave France, then a country in an industrial age to Buganda Kingdom) one should be ready to leave their comfort zone to meet the new realities of their mission
.
This is my experience so far; I have had the joy of meeting new people, new cultures and languages, new ways of doing things and had to face the challenges and difficulties that came with learning them, something I have embraced with much love and joy.

The late Nelson Mandela of South Africa once said “when you speak to the people in a language that they just learnt, it goes to their minds; but if you speak to them in their own maternal language, it goes to their hearts” as missionary priests, we always want to speak to the hearts of the people whose souls God has entrusted to us, that is why we struggle to learn maternal languages of our mission.

God has also given us the grace to learn, so why not learn then, May his name be praised for ever and ever. So far so good, I am enjoying my stay at the Uganda martyrs catholic shrine Namugongo as one of the assisting priest, something I dearly thank God for, Blessed be the Name of the Lord.

Fr. Martin Somda, M.AFr