 Preparing for worship |
Today we spent much of our time at a confirmation service at a church that I can’t remember the name of at the moment. Guess I’ll fill that in later after I talk with Daudi, the diocesan secretary to refresh my memory. But the important thing was, we were there. I think this was a very interesting experience for Bob. Tanzania’s are very animated in their worship expressions and this time was no exception. First of all, everybody sings. I mean everybody. There is no sitting in the back row of the church mouthing the words or perhaps not even engaging in worship. And then there is the dancing. There is lots of dancing. I’ve noticed that it’s starts at an early age too. You see young one’s often swaying to the music and moving about as they see the older children and adults doing the same. It really is a lot of fun and a joy to join in with the congregation. In fact I even started a round of dancing after I had a chance to give a greeting to them. I got started and within an instance the floor was filled with people cheering and dancing before the Lord with all their hearts. I imagine this is somewhat like it was when David danced before the Lord in 2 Samuel 6:14.
 Confirmands |
Along with that, Bob got a chance to address the congregation and encourage the confirmands. Cathy and I had two chances to lead songs with the church. The first was “Halleluia, Your love makes me sing”. No problem with the word Halleluia. Just had to teach them the english words “your love makes me sing”. Later before the confirmations, we sang the song “Forever Reign”. The words to the bridge are normally “My heart will sing no other name, Jesus, Jesus”. We translated it to “My heart sings Jesus”, which in swahili is “Moyo wangu utaimba, Jesu, Jesu”. We did that so that the swahili syllables would line up with the melody. We taught the congregation bridge and then had them join in when it came up in the song. These were sweet times of worship together.
When we got home, we were pretty tired so after some refreshments we took a time of rest and got up at about 5 PM. I find that with the efforts and energy spent in worship, along with the heat of the day and bouncing ride back and forth over unpaved roads, I get wiped out. A couple of hours resting or as we say “chilling out” helps restore my energy.
 |
This evening we had dinner at Andrea Jung’s house. I’ve mentioned about her in past blog posts. Andrea is a missionary from Germany who works with the children’s ministries throughout the diocese. She is someone I admire greatly for her heart of love and service to the Lord.
It’s 10:30 PM now. I think I’ll hit the sack and see what blessings tomorrow brings. I’m schedule to go to the bible college to work on the computer systems and help update the server and thin client computers. Should be a good day. I’m looking forward to it.
Canon Bill