His many friends in the Manhasset community will join Maryknoll missioner Father Peter Le Jacq at St. Ignatius Retreat House, Inisfada, on Friday, Nov. 27 for a Mass of Thanksgiving. Cocktails and dinner will follow immediately. The invitation reads: "In this season of Thanksgiving, the neighbors and friends of Father Le Jacq's home parish wish to share our many blessings with the needy children and adults served by Father Le Jacq in Tanzania, Africa. The evening was the brainchild of Maura Connolly who thought it would be a fitting memorial to her father-in-law, Joseph Connolly who died this year.

Many Manhasset residents, especially parishoners of St. Mary's, are familiar with Father Le Jacq's story. A graduate of St. Mary's schools and St. John's University, he knew from an early age that he wanted to be "a priest doctor in Africa" and he wasted no time in preparing for his mission. In 1976 he entered Cornell Medical College and began a special 12-year program that combined medical training at Cornell with theological studies at Maryknoll Seminary. "The Gospel says, 'Go preach and heal,'" Peter says. "I didn't have the gift of healing but Cornell would give that to me so that I could do it the traditional way."

Throughout his seminary and medical school training, Peter spent time overseas, including stints as a medical missioner in a Cambodian refugee camp, a Guatemalan jungle hospital and in Ireland's inner cities. Then for 12 years he lived and worked in Tanzania working in various capacities at Bugando Medical Centre. He was one of 10 doctors in Tanzania which has a population of seven million. At Bugando he dealt with a raging AIDS epidemic, leprosy and a host of tropical diseases. Of his own bouts with malaria, tuberculosis and dysentery he says, "It's all part of the missionary experience of identifying with the poor. The people know if you stay on even after a bout of malaria, you must really like them."

Every year Peter returned to the United States for one month to raise funds for the hospital and always fit a visit to his old Manhasset parish into his schedule.

In July 1996 Peter returned to the United States for a six-year assignment with Maryknoll's Mission Promotion Department, where he is involved in mission education, vocational recruiting and fundraising in New York and Connecticut. He has been traveling around speaking on weekends at parishes in the area and he enjoys it but he knows he will go back to Africa and he wants to do that.

Peter stopped into the Manhasset Press office at our request for an interview. We asked him what the transition period had been like, what "culture shock" he had experienced. It was something for which Maryknoll had prepared him. "They warn us that we will lose touch," he said. "You don't become at home in your mission country but you've left your own country so that you're never completely at home," he added, "but that's all right. St. Paul tells us 'Your home is not on this earth.' If I had stayed in Manhasset I would have been happy but it would have given me a false sense of permanence, living and practicing medicine in the town I grew up in."

As to this stint in the United States, he said that he knew he would come back at some point. This time turned out to be a good time for the hospital in Tanzania because he was able to get help replacing him (it took four people), a good time for his family and a good time for Maryknoll.

He acknowledges that he was "braced for a superficial experience in the affluent US. Not that I have any false ideas about how wonderful poverty is, but circumstances remove temptation from us. Ninety-five percent of the Tanzanians have no temptations," he said, "but deliver us from the five percent of evil leaders."

One thing Peter didn't expect to have when he came home was friends. He felt he was so removed from his old life and old friends and had such a different experience from people he would meet. He was home only one week when his superior at Maryknoll told him that West Point had asked Maryknoll if they had someone in the community who could team teach at the Academy. The requirements were that the person have a doctorate and some African experience. Peter had both but he regards himself as a pacifist. "I wanted no connection with training the military," he said, "but his superior ordered him to give it a six-month trial, stressing the fact that it was a good thing for West Point to reach out to Maryknoll. "Support what is good in the military," he was told, "such as its peacekeeping efforts."

Peter became a visiting lecturer and gradually became part of the West Point family. One weekend the Catholic chaplain asked if he could replace him while he was away. There was Peter, performing weddings for cadets walking under an aisle of sabers, making hospital visits, saying the cadets' Mass. Next he was prevailed upon to give a retreat for a group called "Troops Encounter Christ." He says he was "shocked by the faith of the cadets." One young man told him, "We believe in something so much we're willing to die for it." Surely a kindred spirit. Peter got to know and become friends with many people at West Point and is now an adjunct professor, part of a team teaching about Africa in the sociology department.

Another American who has become a friend is Stephen McDonald, the police officer who became a paraplegic in the line of duty. The two have worked retreats together and now do that a few times a month. Peter stays with the McDonalds when he is on Long Island. Stephen McDonald has shown Peter the noble side of police work just as West Point has given him a new take on the military. "In the army, in the police, in the missions," he said, "your own survival can't be your number one priority. You have to do what is right."

He feels in his present assignment he is representing Tanzania to the Americans just as he represented America to the Tanzanians.

This article could go on and on but why not join Father Peter Le Jacq at Inisfada on Nov. 27. Call Maura Connolly at 627-2549 or Eileen Denihan at 365-5363 for more information and reservations.