Day of Rest

An early start to our day enabled us to make it to two church sites with Gordon, one of the welcoming missionaries we already talked about. The first church site was rather large--so large, in fact, that they planted several other churches in surrounding neighborhoods. They had one temporary building set up and construction going on for a LARGE permanent chuch building. Unfortunately, they ran out of money before they could put a roof on it, so they are stuck in the temporary building. While we were listening to the story, the missionary sighed and told us: "They shared a well donated to them by an NGO. That well really impressed the community, that christians would share water with nonchristians in the community. It is a shame that they cannot finish this building, because a beautiful building can attract people teetering between deciding to go to church or not. It is sad that it has to work like that...They just tell me that the catholics build their own churches, the mosques are build by their followers, why shouldn't protestant churches be built by their members?"

While still in the temporary building, there are no lack of miracles. Government officials have supported the growth of the church much more than ever imagined, in spite of their differing religious beliefs. However, people that would go to this church go to a less crowded church instead. We were led to one of the planted churches for our actual service.

Greeted by several people in Bombara, the local language, we were given seats behind the pulpit in front of the church. We had the best seats to see the choir, childrens choir, mens chorus, and French music group. Gordon brought hymnals to sing from, and since bombara is a phonetical language, we were able to sing with them. The three drummers beside us went faster and faster for each verse until everyone was dancing and clapping, and praising God. Even the children were dancing and jumping around. This was the main part of the service.

During the sermon, the missionary spoke in Bombara (perfectly, as far as we could tell) to an enraptured audience--except for an adorable little boy who kept trying to shine the shoes that went with his little suit. After the sermon, the church elders gave us soft drinks and every single church member shook our hand while giving us a little bow of respect as they left. It was very humbling.

We returned back to the base to find Francoise, our cook, making our meal riz au gras, a meal that has rice with the sauce mixed in, served with steamed vegetables like squash, carrots, cabbage and potatoes. This is a meal we have had several times here and is many native's favorite meal. Since Collin is sick and the rest of the team has head colds, we all decided to nap after lunch. Dinner was a comforting beef stew. After devotions and a brief game, we went our separate ways. We all fell asleep to the music of the Sunday evening local dance club.

Prayer requests: Collin's sickness to go away, Dena to be welcomed into the PROPHETE center and supported for her research, the travels of Sarah and Dr. Widmer as they visit a friend they made in a previous trip, and Nate as he leads all of these activities.