A priest plays an important role in building the Body of Christ, which is the Church. We three brothers, Juby Maniyemkereil, Libin Kariyil, and Jeff Shawn Kaipettiyil got the opportunity to work as daily wage labourers in a house construction site, as part of the exposure programme of our priestly studies. The unlimited experiences that we gained from constructing the house gave us variety of insights into building the Church in a fruitful manner. This is a brief account of our exposure programme.

The Search

On the 7th of April, two days before the start of our exposure, we were asked to give an outline of the work we were going to do. During the briefing, the slots corresponding to the three of us remained vacant because we had not decided on a task that we liked!

The search for the task was really a tedious job. Two of my friends and I could really feel the pain and anxiety of the unemployed youth on all these days. At last we had two options before us – one being a comparatively simpler job, which was to work in a hotel, and the other being a difficult task of working as daily wage labourers at a construction site. But as usual we were in the look out for a middle path – a job that was neither too easy nor too difficult. As in real life, the middle path is something that is difficult to practice and follow, and the same happened in our case also. We had to select either of the above-mentioned jobs. All three of us, although not very strong physically, relied on the power of Lord Jesus and took up the daily wage labour option of working at a construction site.

Into the field

On 9th April 2007, a fine Monday morning after Easter, we set off to our work place. We didn’t know the exact place of the site; we were asked to reach a place called Jakkasandra and ring up the contractor who was in Tamil Nadu. We called up the contractor and he told us he would send a person from the work place. We started waiting and waiting at the Jakkasandara bus stop for half an hour but no one came to take us. When we were desperately waiting for that person, we saw a guy who seemed to be calling us from the other side of the road. We experienced a sigh of relief and rushed towards him, but suddenly an auto-rickshaw came and he got into it and left… actually he was signalling to the auto driver! We looked at each other and smiled. Life is like this: We expect things to happen in our own way but Jesus has His own plan for us – “The plans for your welfare and not for your harm, to give you a future with hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

Now that we had waited a long time, we decided to move further, and to our astonishment we saw another bus stop, the name of which read Jakkasandara – the other bus stop also had the same name! (My God! Which is the real Jakkasandara bus stop?) We realized that this was the place we were supposed to be standing at, and there we met the Mesthiri (the main worker) who came to take us along. We reached the site, but we were not assigned any work on the first day because we were late. We went back to our rooms and spent our time with a lot of anxiety for the task that we were to start the following day.

To the anxious and tense minds, the Rosary to Mother Mary is really soothing. On that day, we meditated on the Joyous mysteries and the message was loud and clear – If we say Amen to the Lord’s words like Mother Mary did, we will not have to look back. With this strong conviction, we prepared our minds for the labour.