Father Jeff recently returned from a trip to South Africa and Tanzania. The first part of the trip to South Africa was for the Organizational Dynamics degree that Father Jeff is earning at the University of Pennsylvania.  The trip to Tanzania was to connect with Don Ward, a Jesuit that FJ had lived with previously in Camden.  In FJ’s own words:

      My heart has been been lost in Africa!   What an extraordinary trip it was for me.  First, to meet my Jesuit brothers working in Tanzania was wonderful.  I felt so inspired by their vocations and utterly grateful to God for my own vocation!  How wonderful it is that God wanted me to be a Jesuit! I feel cared and loved by God!
    

  During my time in Tanzania, I was deeply moved by the poverty that I saw.  I have seen poverty before in my journeys to Central/South America and  here in Camden.  However, what struck me the most was the lack of opportunity for so many.  After maxing out of school in the early teens, there are limited jobs and very few opportunities for advancement.  At one point, when we were out, we had a flat tire.  We pulled over and our truck was quickly surrounded by 10 young men.  They immediately began changing our flat.  At the end, we paid each of them 1000 shillings--about 80 cents--a person.  What was amazing was to encounter so many willing and able bodied men who saw an opportunity and grabbed it.  I would love to hire such talented and energetic workers.  For me the encounter crystalized how hungry people are for opportunity, for futures of hope and possibility.