In 1879 the Jesuits made arrangements to establish missions to the north of the Limpopo River and in the Zambezi river valley. The head of the mission was Father Depelchin, a Belgian who had already spent eighteen years in India. He took with him a ten other priests from Belgium, Italy, England and Germany.  They made three successive expeditions between 1879 and 1882, beginning in the coastal town of Grahamstown, in the Cape Colony, and involved hundreds of kilometres by ox-waggon through difficult country taking six months. The goal was always the same – to ask the local people for permission to open a mission station in their land, but each time, they refused. Depelchin wrote about their misfortunes, trials, diseases and accidents in his letters sent "from the lands of the Matabeles," in the huts of the Batongas" and from "the valley of the Barotses," which were published in Brussels as a two-volume set in 1882 and 1883 under the title of Trois ans dans l'Afrique australe [Three Years in Southern Africa]

On the 6^th September 1879 Fathers Depelchin and Law accompanied by James Fairbairn meet Lobengula at his royal kraal at Ishoshani, or White Rocks. After presenting their gifts, they returned two days later. They told Lobengula they would be happy to live as missionaries amongst his people and to have a mission station at Old Bulawayo and another at Tati.  Lobengula replied through Fairbairn that he had enough of abafundisi, that is teachers and missionaries and that for 20 years the Protestant missionaries had worked in his country without success.  “They have attained nothing” he said, “absolutely nothing; the children don’t want to learn and the grown-ups are quite happy to be as they are.”

Father Croonenberghs also notes in his diaries that on the 7^th November they moved on to the royal kraal at Old Bulawayo, (which they call Gu-Bulawayo) although Fathers Depelchin and Law and Brothers Nigg and Hedley remain behind for a few days at Ishoshani to repair the King’s wagon. Father Croonenberghs says the trader Martin treats him like a spoilt son, and that from his house built on the top of Lion’s head, a local hill, over koBulawayo and its hundreds of huts.

Finally, Lobengula gave the Jesuits permission to stay and buy Greite’s house and land from the English trader Grant. He has also given permission for the Jesuits to mount an expedition to the Zambesi River in the following year after the rains have gone. 

They bought Greite’s house on present-day Sauerdale. Father Croonenberghs S.J. wrote in his diary: "We have just bought for £500 sterling, an excellent house: it is one of the best in Gubuluwayo, though, to tell the truth, that is not saying much. Our enclosure, fenced with hedges, contains a large one-storey cottage, constructed in stone, like the small farm houses in the district of Namur; there are also some sheds and stables made of wood and pise; in addition there is a large store made of sheet iron. We propose to turn this into a chapel: it could hold 200 people with case. We also have a garden and poultry yard."

Adjacent is a small graveyard where there are two graves. One of these is that of Father Bartholomew Kroot, S.J., who arrived at the Mission on May 10, 1885, and died there from cancer on June 21 of the same year, at the age of thirty-eight. The other grave is that of a native leper who converted to Catholicism.

In August-September, 1881, Lobengula transferred his kraal to the present site of Government House, Bulawayo and all the buildings at koBulawayo, with the exception of those belonging to the Catholics, were destroyed, including “the King’s palace, the Queen’s huts, all the buildings in the royal kraal, sheds, coach houses, stables, and even old King Mosilikatsi’s waggon. ”