MISSIONER NEWSLETTER – Winter 2025

Francis Wayne, Kenya

A neighbor tends her garden while raising chickens she sells for income. She starts them as hatchlings, though a few are often lost to the pesky black birds.

I have been remiss in writing my mission story lately, although I have written many essays in the past few months. I’ve been attending the fall semester by Zoom at Brescia University in Owensboro, Kentucky. I took a full load of four classes, completing 12 credit hours. I am studying social work and theology, subjects closely related to my mission work here in Kenya and to the kind of work I was doing before Maryknoll Lay Missioners.

My courses—two in social work, one in theology, and one in English literature—took all my free time. Now, at the end of the semester, I finally have time to catch up with a newsletter. I’m hoping that the next semester, starting in January, will be easier, as my reading and writing skills may have improved and quickened a bit. I hope. I feel like a student again.

Celebrating the graduation of a former student, now working on a fishing vessel off the coast of Kilifi. He studied refrigeration repair and maintenance at the university.

My ministries in Kenya have changed somewhat, but I expect to resume all my assignments in the new year. I have not been teaching lately at the Shimo La Tewa Prison Borstal Boys Facility. The facility experienced some “financial” discrepancies at the end of 2025. I emphasize the word financial because I am a volunteer, and the cost for me to be there teaching is zero. I have learned that working at a prison—where I have now served for three years—is a day-to-day invitation upon arriving at the front gate. Sometimes I am allowed to enter; other times I am turned away. What keeps me returning to the front gate each workday is when a student asks me the day before, “Are you coming tomorrow?” I will wait until their issue is resolved so I can return to teaching new life skills to these young prison inmates.

I remain active in the Alcoholics Anonymous program in the Mombasa area and often attend four meetings a week. One meeting is held at the mental health unit at Port Reitz Hospital; two meetings are at rehabilitation centers for substance abuse; one is at Mombasa Hospital, which is a regular AA meeting open to anyone with a desire to stop drinking; and sometimes I go to Borstal on Saturdays to hold a meeting with the youth.

I also sponsor young men—at 74 years old, most men are young men to me—in AA, helping them work the suggested Twelve Steps and practice AA principles to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. Kenya is a difficult place for people seeking to improve their lives, especially those struggling with addiction. Leaving their drug of choice is the first step. Finding spiritual and communal support is the next. Many people with addictions have lost everything—jobs, families, safe housing, personal integrity—everything they had, which in Kenya may not have been much even before the addiction worsened. When someone comes to AA seeking relief, perhaps a small measure of personal dignity remains, and that is what we in AA have to work with: that desire to be better. Through prayer, reliance on a personal Higher Power, and developing a new life in community with others in sobriety, addicts learn to turn their suffering into moments of hope, one day at a time. I love my sobriety and helping others achieve theirs.

These are my mission responsibilities and endeavors: waiting to teach again at Borstal in the new year; practicing the principles of AA in all my affairs and helping others achieve sobriety; and continuing my education to improve the work I do as a missioner. My new mission statement is: “As an elder man, my mission is to teach young men to become good men.”

Maryknoll Lay Missioners do excellent work serving the poor. Please give financial support to MKLM.

Asanteni sana!

Please consider supporting my prison ministry in Mombasa with a donation through the link below.

I also invite you to walk with me as a “COMPANION IN MISSION.” Companions in Mission are friends and generous donors who give financial gifts on a regular (usually monthly) basis. For more information, visit Become a Companion in Mission. Thank you so much for your generosity!