Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Meet Our 2011 Novices

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Meet Our 2011 Novices - Amos Kutwa

My name is Amos Kutwa Sibo. I am 27 years old and I am the second last child from a family of six children. Mombasa, on the coast of Kenya, is my place of birth. It is the most beautiful city in Kenya and is known for its tourist attractions.
I started my discernment journey as a postulant in the Congregation of Christian Brothers in 2010 in Arusha, Tanzania. During that period I had a chance of getting new horizons of learning, community and ministry. Working in a special needs school was a new experience for me. I really enjoyed it.
We started our novitiate journey on 5th February this year. The novitiate community comprises of people from Zambia, Sierra Leone, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, India and Australia. This gives me an opportunity to live cross-culturally. The most challenging thing so far is the hot weather of Tamale, but there is not much difference from the climate where I grew up. Coming to the novitiate is, for me, a more intense way of discerning my vocation.

1 comment:

Joseph Githenji said...: I happy to see you on this site since we worked together in Arusha. May God bless you in your Novitiate.; March 21, 2011 at 6:29 PM

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What do we want this novitiate to be?

There is a saying that goes something like this: “If we don’t do what we believe in, then we’ll end up believing in what we do”. Without a vision that is authentic and alive to guide our actions, then we can settle for rationalizing the status quo or what is convenient and comfortable.
One of the first things the new team in Tamale did was to spend time beginning to articulate its vision of a novitiate beyond the basics laid down in our Constitutions. Here are some elements of what we came up with:
Novitiate is a journey, a process that involves KNOWING, EXPERIENCING and CHOOSING.
It is an INITIATION into Christian Brother religious life, so a “rite of passage” into a new identity, a time of learning and testing.
Novitiate confronts the novices with the Brother’s vocation as a call to brotherly solidarity and community, not to privilege, status and security.
It involves exploration of the basic values of faith and vocation, and the challenge to embrace these out of personal conviction and free choice.
Novitiate means understanding that a religious vocation makes a claim on the whole of the person and his life, including his inner life, his relationships and his professional activity (ministry). Furthermore, it challenges the novice to see the dynamic inter-relationship of these areas and to learn what their integration means.
Novitiate is a time of DISCERNMENT. The novice learns more deeply who he is, and what this Christian Brother life is. There is a constant back-and-forth movement between these two poles as an answer is sought to the question, “Is this where I am meant to be? Is this the life that will enable me to find my true self in God?”