Happy anniversary, Maria! And happy Father’s Day, Dad and Dad-in-Law! It was tough being so far away from family today, and I’m anxious to get back home. This morning I opened up a few presents that my brilliant wife, Maria sent along with me. Why brilliant? She thought ahead to what I might be missing most after one week here, and packed it away for me: some sour gummy worms, a packet of beef jerky, and my favorite cereal, Craklin’ Oat Bran. The coup de grace, so to speak, was a Hallmark card with Maria’s and Will’s recorded voices! What a great woman!
Today was also the only Sunday that I will be here, so I was very curious how church would go. Rafiki makes a point of not having a church or chapel on the grounds. Thus, the ROS and the children get a good deal of exposure to the body of Christ in the community. There are three churches go to, and today I went to Katawa Presbyterian. For many reasons, it was a very interesting experience. First, there is often a power outage on Sundays, and today was no exception. They did have a generator working, however, so there were working microphones and speakers. Second, they had FIVE different choirs perform! Each choir sang a sort of “entrance” song, which was sung while they moved and danced to the front of the sanctuary. My favorite songs were the ones sung completely acappella, but most of the time a keyboard (with drum beat) was used as accompaniment. The sermon was quite bizarre, consisting of the (visiting) pastor shouting into the microphone (and thus getting all distorted) about how the people there needed to be practical Christians, not nominal Christians. That’s all well and good, but I don’t think he ever went into any depth on what it means to be a practical Christian. Plus, the topic for the sermon had nothing to do with the scripture readings for the day. As he was preaching, I realized why Rafiki was starting to set up periodic pastors' conferences for training some of the local ministers on biblical teaching.
For lunch, Debbie and Susan took us out to A1, one of the two restaurants in town that the most of the ROS trust (although David warned me that his last trip there resulted in two days of intestinal issues!). I ordered a dish that Susan highly recommended, even though she said, “It looks like creamed Kermit.” Indeed, it was a deep, vibrant green, but it was also very good (after I added some hot spices).
In the afternoon, one of the choirs from Katawa came to the Rafiki village to record some video of them dancing in a beautiful setting. They also gave dance lessons to some of the 6 and 7 year-old girls, and got some video of them dancing too. Sandy Lu helped out, and according to her it was absolutely heavenly to combine two of her passions: children and worshipful dancing! I got a lot of nice photos, which I’ll try to share at some point.
At the end of the day, I realized that it was exactly one week ago that we arrived at this village. Hooray for making it this far! I know that God has a lot more for me to see and experience before I leave, but looking back at this past week shows me that I’ve already learned and been exposed to a lot.
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