I was searching for a new mission. 

After working for four years in Mozambique and for 15 years in Brazil, with stateside promotion work in between, it was time for me to do what missioners do often: move on again. The question was, “Where?”

First, I visited two of Maryknoll’s priority sites in Africa:  Mombasa, Kenya, and Mwanza, Tanzania. The Maryknollers there were friendly and inviting, and doing good and necessary ministry. I could see myself doing mission in either city.  But in my heart I wasn’t convinced; something wasn’t clicking. 

All during the search my prayer was to know what ministry I was being called to do; to know the place and the people with whom I should live and minister. My favorite prayer was to sit quietly and write a letter to Jesus in my journal about the people and events of that day. I would write to Jesus about what was in my heart. Those were days and days of waiting. But the answer I kept hearing was, “not here” and “not now.” Yet, even so, as I sat in prayer, I also had a sense of peace. There was an assurance from deep within: if only I waited, if only I trusted, the answer would come.

Then, my superior in Africa asked me to visit our Maryknoll missioners in Namibia.

I started with those who worked in Windhoek, the capital. There I was invited by Father Wayne Weinlader to travel north with him to Rundu, a large provincial town where he was building a soup kitchen for aids orphans. As we drove north, we were stopped at a police inspection point along the old apartheid line of separation between white ranch land and black tribal areas. As soon as we crossed into the tribal land, a voice deep inside of me said, “This is home.”

After reviewing the soup kitchen, Father Wayne drove me 60 miles out of town to a rural mission where a young priest, Father Charles Mikaya, was working alone. As we talked, I had a strong intuition that he was a man with whom I could work. I explained to Father Charles my ministry  in Mozambique, where I developed a center for translating evangelization materials into the local language and established a computer school. That, he said, was exactly what was needed in his parish.

What I heard when Father Wayne and I had driven across the old apartheid line was not so much words but a sense of being in the right place, an experience of peace deep inside me. Later, with Father Charles, I felt a need to be rooted in that rural mission, that this was where the Lord wanted to plant me. My search was over.
Am I describing some especially dramatic religious experience? I think not. This is how the day-to-day process of discernment in prayer happens. It is through prayerful discernment that the Spirit leads us, using the people and events of daily life to speak to us.

Although this search happened three years ago, my prayer for many years has been the same.  I ask the Lord, “What do you want of me this day?” I simply trust that in the stillness of my heart the answers will come. Jesus assures us that if we are constant in prayer, if we ask and ask again, what we ask for will be given to us. He assures us that if we seek, trusting in the Spirit, the door will be found. In the prayer of discernment, stepping through the open door is our “Amen” to the answer that Jesus has given us.  

Maryknoll Brother Mark Gruenke, from St. Paul, Minn., has worked as a teacher and a registered nurse, and brings skills from both disciplines to his ministries.