20 Years

Twenty years exactly to the day passed yesterday since I boarded the British Airways plane in Warsaw Okęcie International Airport en route to Heathrow, then switching to Aer Lingus from Heathrow to Dublin, together with my fellow rookie missionary, Fr. Janusz Zajda, on our way to Archdiocese of Armagh, to spend three months there in order to improve our English language skills, before we were able to fly to Tanzania to begin our kiswahili language course in Maryknoll Language School in Musoma as the first step of our new missionary life...


That day, August 14, 1990, is the official date of the beginning of my life and work as a missionary. Father Janusz and myself had no opportunity to prepare for the missions in the Center for Missionary Formation in Warsaw, as it usually happens (a one year preparatory course), so our time in Archdiocese of Armagh I consider myself as a short preparatory course in missionary formation which substituted very well for that long one in Warsaw. I am still in the missions after twenty years, so I guess, my hosts in Ireland did a great job, getting me and Janusz ready for a long missionary life!

That day, August 14, 1990, is the day I see as an official day of me leaving Archdiocese of Kraków for good...This is the first day in my twenty years of being a missionary...The benchmark day... The reference point day to all measurements of my life...

That day, August 14,1990, is the day I first met Father Tom Daly and Father Eugene Sweeney. This is the first day of our friendship that stood the trial of time and distances, grew and matured throughout the years and still goes on stronger than ever before....

Father Tom and Father Eugene were the priests who came to Dublin on that day to meet us at the airport and took us to Drogheda where our fate was decided by the means of flipping a coin. It came out that I was to stay in Drogheda and Janusz was to go bit further to Ardee Parish where he stayed for almost a year, trying to improve the language skills better, and I stayed in Drogheda for three months more or less, with Tom and Eugene in the same rectory at Hardman's Gardens, at Our Lady of Lourdes church in Drogheda...Then at the beginning of December 1990 I returned back to Kraków and right after the Christmas, I started my journey towards my destiny, to Africa, to Tanzania...

Yesterday, my heart and mind were on the way to Dublin and Drogheda, to Tom and Eugene and all wonderful people in Ireland I was blessed to meet there. Reliving again with full force the sensation of that magical day...when everything begun...my missionary life and our friendship with Tom and Eugene, and with all beloved friends in Ireland...

Jesus was right. We leave one family, parents and relatives, to get hundred fantastic families, relatives and friends instead! What a great 'trade'! I am truly blessed to have you, Tom and Eugene, Lena, Maura and your family, the family of Father Eugene, all my friends in Drogheda and Armagh and elsewhere...and you know what? God never gives you fake gifts...My friends in Ireland are pure gems, diamonds of top class...How lucky I am! Wooooohoooo!

Twenty years and counting...going strong, alive and kicking. You guys simply rock! Thank YOU!!!! Looking forward to the silver jubilee of our friendship in five years time and beyond! God bless you much!