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“We lived at the parish for 2 years in 1942- 1944. We would be allowed to go home after every two weeks, we would leave on Friday and come back on Sundays, and we carried food from home and cooked for ourselves” She expressed her concern that the faith taught to children has gone down; you cannot compare the catechism of today to that of their days. “Catechism has gone down, the rules of catechism have changed, and the children grew up knowing God even the girls grew up humble” she said in dholuo language Maurice Ogwalo Agutu ,87 one of the many elderly who had made their way to parish said that he too feels dejected by the low level of how young Catholics have deteriorated in catechism recitations soon after they get done with the classes. “Before we received first Holy Communion, we were taught many things; we even crammed stories of the bible and could recite them off head, and we had to prove that we could recall what we had been taught, today’s children cannot do that even after undergoing catechism,” he says. Fr Bouma, one of the first missionaries who set up the mission is said to have been faced with the big challenge of cultural influence ranging from wife inheritance amongst many others. Reports say that Fr Bouma was able to offer financial and spiritual assistance to the orphaned and widowed that were committed to the church. To Margaret Ngong’a 70, Aluor parish is home. She walked all the way from Ndori almost 30 kilometres from Aluor to come for the centenary celebration; the parish is where her husband first brought her when she got married. His mother was at the time living and working as a cook at the parish, she was one of the widows Fr Bouma took in to live in the parish after her husband a catechist died. “The gate of Aluor girls secondary school is exactly where the gate to my home used to be, but we had to go back home to our ancestral land when my mother in law passed away, though we buried her here in the parish cemetery, said Mrs Ngong’a She fondly remembers Fr Akel, one of the fathers who served in the parish then, and his fear of lightening, “He would come to shelter at our house when it rained pretending to talk to us, asking us what we had cooked, though we all knew he was afraid of lightening, once the rain stopped he would go back to his house.” The challenge facing Aluor parish even as it turns a hundred years is self sustenance. “The church is still growing despite the fact that those who planted the seed of faith have passed on, we have to strengthen the faith instilled by the first missionaries and we have to be responsible for the welfare of Christians, Patricia Atieno, She stayed at the Parish for 2 years as a catechist Margaret Ngonga; one of the pilgrims at Aluor Parish. She fondly remembers Fr. Akel and his fear of lightining we must support the church in terms of building schools, dispensaries and so on, just as the first missionaries knew you need to educate people,” said John Miluga Omolo the parish council chairman. “Our present priests unlike the missionaries depend on Christians and the Christians income is low, when Christians look at the projects done by the missionaries they imagine that the church is rich and has a lot of money, we have to sensitize them to understand that things have changed and our local priests fully depend on them,” he added. The question many would ask as the parish turns a century is whether in the coming 50 or so years the Church could witness a church as vibrant as it ??????????????????????????????????????????
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