Like the Apostles, Spiritans go out with the same mission but come back to their communities with different stories. In this installment of our Spiritan Journeys series, Fr. Lazarus Langbiir, C.S.Sp. describes the joy and richness of living together in community with other Spiritans.



Transcript: Hello my name is Lazarus Langbiir. I am a Spiritan Priest from Ghana, the Province of Ghana, and I am currently in the United States of America. I came to the U.S first for Graduate Studies and I have my Master's in Business Administration from Duquesne University and also a PhD in Rhetoric and Communication from Duquesne University. I just finished one year of teaching at the same University and I'm getting ready for my next assignment.

I'm going to talk to you about my favorite part of living in community as a Spiritan. What brings us first of all together is a common Mission. We come together first of all for the evangelization of the poor uh evangelization of everyone but we have a preferential uh option or preference for the poor and we uh we come together for that mission and for that purpose in imitation of the life of Jesus Christ and his Apostles. They they live together they work together they journey together and then they go out and work and come back home.

So that is what we do and the joy in that is that we go out with the same Mission and purpose but we come back home with different stories. And the opportunity to share those different stories you know that are tied to that one common mission is what brings me so much joy.

Since I've been in the United States I've lived in three different communities so far and you live with people somehow of your the same age or the same generation others are not and so you get experiences from people of different age groups, people of different cultural backgrounds people with different educational backgrounds and all of us come together we live together, sleep in the same building, you know share the same food, share some drinks from time to time, and we go out and socialize too.

So that's family setting of living together is beautiful and that is the greatest part of my joy in living in community as a Spiritan.