The African church experience

Today is Sunday so I went to church.   I actually went to two church services.  The first one I went to is here on the hospital compound.  This seems to be where most of the missionary doctors go.  The service is all in English and it was fairly typical of the American church.  The church was probably about 40% white and 60% black.  I think some of the patients and families from the hospital also attended the service.  One patient in particular stuck out to me.  He was a little boy probably around 6 or 7 years old.  I have seen him around the hospital grounds throughout the week.   Every time I have seen him, he has been in a wheelchair or walking around with a single crutch.  I believe he is alone here at Tenwek, as I have not seen him with anyone else.  This morning he came into the church hobbling a little with his one crutch.  He was wearing the same clothes that I have seen him in all week.  He looked up and smiled a little at me before sitting down right in front of me.   Actually, I think every time I have seen him he has been smiling.  The time came for the offering.  The offering bag went by him, and I noticed that he dropped a couple of small coins in the bag.  Coins are very little money here, but that is not the point.  He was clearly giving out of money he really didn’t have to give.  It reminded me of a passage in Luke 21:1-4 which says “As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury.  He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins.  I tell you the truth, he said, this poor widow has put in more than all the others.  All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”  I had not planned to go to this church this morning, but I am glad I did.  I am hoping to be able to meet this boy sometime during the upcoming week. 

 I did leave the first church a little early, because I wanted to be sure to make it to the African Gospel Church which is where I had planned to go.  This church’s scheduled start time is 10am.  I had heard it doesn’t really start at 10, so I arrived a few minutes late.  As it turns out, I was still one of the first people there.  They were just starting to setup for church around 10.  I met up with one of the surgeons here that is from the Detroit area.  He and his wife are here full time.  They used to be in small group with Kristen before they left the Detroit area.  Church finally started around 10:20 however there were still very few people there.  By around 11 the church was getting fairly full.  There were probably around 250 people in attendance, and the surgeon and I were the only two white people (his wife is out of the country working on a mission project at the moment).  The service had a lot of singing and most of it was in the local language.  Their singing is quite unique.  It kept on reminding me of the Lion King.  The preaching was in both English and the local language.  They had two men standing at the podium.  The pastor spoke in English and then the other guy translated into the local language which I think was probably Swahili.  The service lasted about 2 hours and 15 minutes.  I took probably about 15 minutes of video with my camera so those back home could see a little of it.   Near the end, the pastor held up some produce.  I wasn’t really sure why he was doing this, but Todd, the surgeon, explained that some people brought things from their farms as a tithe.  The pastor was asking if anyone wanted to purchase the items in order to turn the food tithe into a money tithe for the church.  I have never seen that in the US before.  As we were leaving the church, I noticed there was only one car in the parking lot.  All of the people in the church had walked to church.            

After church, I came back to the guesthouse for lunch.  It was quite an unusual lunch today.  It of course had green beans, pineapple, and rice, but we also had pizza, mashed potatoes, fried chicken, and cinnamon rolls.  The fried chicken was boneless chicken that they dipped in batter and fried.  The pizza had the same type of crust as they use to make rolls, pizza sauce, and cheese.  It was not exactly Hungry Howie’s pizza, but it was a nice change.  All of their food is made from scratch here.  They have two cooks in the guesthouse that cook for about 8 – 12 of us every day.  I think they start cooking in the morning for lunch and cook all afternoon for dinner.  Most of the food is fairly good.  I also tried a banana this morning for breakfast that I had purchased from one of the local vendors yesterday.  Their bananas are different here.  They are shorter and have a slight orange/yellow tint on the inside.  They taste good though.