Monday, January 26, 2009

He is our King

Saturday night, we got the opportunity to get off the base and enjoy ourselves a bit! We went to the movie theater to see Bride Wars and have a nice cool treat of ice cream. The movie theater was a lot like ours at home, except it only cost 33R which is about $3 compared to the $9 movies at home. I really enjoyed the movie and it even got a few tears out of me!?! I was so caught up in the movie though, that when it finished I was confused!  I thought I was back home in the states for a minute until we were back out in the parking lot in warm weather, in the middle of January, driving on the left side of the road. 

Sunday morning we woke up and went to Elizabeth’s (Eunice’s mother) church in Kabokweni. The church was SO alive! They had one drummer and a person playing a keyboard, yet it felt like they had a whole band up there. The church was in a large one-room garage essentially. When we walked in, I was surprised to see how many children there were compared to adults. I know that there are so many orphans here, and I know those are whom we are ministering too, but it’s so easy for me to just imagine there parents are just at home working. I can’t wrap my head around how these children live. For instance, the Orlando team is building a home for orphans. Do these children live in a house with no parents? How do they get food then? The whole situation is so immense that I’m barely beginning to understand it, but seeing so many children in church without parents, was a bit surreal. Anyways, when we walked in, everyone was up and dancing. They were singing in an African language, so sadly I couldn’t understand them. But they would sing songs, then someone would begin to speak and everyone would quickly sit down. They a lady in the choir would get up and start to sing and everyone would join in singing and dancing again. Then someone would begin to speak, and everyone would sit down right away again. The sitting and standing was almost a dance routine in itself. At one point, everyone in the church formed a conga-line and danced and sang around in a circle! They had so much joy and happiness. It was contagious. I kept thinking though, how beautiful their expression of love was to God. And in that thought, I begin to just marvel at all the different ways people praise Him. My church in Milwaukee is mostly hymnals, North Way Oakland is very modern music and people freely raise their hands in praise, and then here is an African church full out dancing as they worship God. How people express their love for God can vary so much, but it’s so neat to think that God loves everyone of them. Finally, after much dancing and singing, a Pastor gave a message on God’s grace. I do not have a watch yet, so I am not sure exactly how long the service was, but it was at least 2 hours long. It got a bit hot when the pastor turned all the fans of for his sermon, but besides that it wasn’t too bad.

To finish off the weekend, Sunday night was community night! Other community nights have been mostly worship and prayer, but this night, we split the group into two and played a game of capture the flag. It was a bit of a different version than I am used to playing and we played on a very small area, almost like the size of our gym. My team lost, but it’s all good. We gave it our best try! After a bit of playing, the staff member brought us ice cream as a nice cool treat. Sunday was very hot, so it was nice to have a refreshing dessert. 

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