What an immense joy to learn that our Jesuit/JRS Afghan mission is completing 15 grace-filled years! The glad communique ushers in waves of wonderful memories from my teaching ministry at Herat University.

 

At the warm invite of and the meticulous planning by Fr Stan Fernandes, three of us—Mr Cecil, Fr Kennedy and I—joined the Herat Jesuit community which also housed the pioneers of the mission, Fr Santiago and Br Noel.

 

At the Department of Computer Science, I had the joy of teaching three classes (2nd, 3rd, and 4th years). The students’ eagerness to learn is still vivid in my memory. The state-of-the-art computer lab (courtesy: the German support) was handy to quench their thirst.

 

That experience-rich teaching tenure, together with the mutually caring community life, has positively impacted my academic and ministerial arenas, particularly in calling me to pay heed to the peripheries and marginalized. Both during licentiate and doctoral studies (in USA) and teaching ministries (in India, Kenya, and Italy), the Herat experience has helpfully colored my research trajectory and has guided me to reach out to the less-privileged in our ministry places.

 

God bless our Afghan mission!