Church Visitation
I wake up to a leisurely morning. This is a cleanup day on the campus and the students are busy sweeping sidewalks and tidying up.
Rev. Kim takes me downtown to Jet Travel Service to pay for my plane tickets to Uganda on March 22-24. Richard Tiu comes with us; we take our laptops with us so we can stop at the Nairobi Java House for lunch and free high speed internet access. Unfortunately when we arrive the service is down. We have lunch, but no internet. Perhaps it is just as well, as I was hoping to make contact with my family and it would have been 2:00 am in Edmonton by the time we were there.
We return home for a brief rest before we head out to for church family visitation. The church is divided in to four or five districts and we are going to have a fellowship time with a group of these families. The rains have made the roads very difficult to travel. There are either high rock s in the road or low points filled with water. Eben negotiates the school van very well over these difficult places. When we arrive we find ourselves on the outskirts of a coffee plantation, where most of the church members from this district work. The houses are made of cement blocks in a type of row housing with very small one-room units. A crowd of about 20-25 people, including college students gather for singing. We sing in Kiswahili, which is very easy to pronounce – every vowel is pronounced exactly the same way every time, a luxury which those who learn English do not enjoy. I preach from Psalm 34 and the sermon is translated by Pastor Bernard Akhwale. I am informed that he is not ordained and that the term “pastor” is used quite loosely here. Those who are ordained are called Rev. He has the spiritual oversight of these families. After sermon there is a request for prayer requests. One by one most of the people stand and ask for prayer for illnesses, an unsaved husband, etc. They are grateful for the Word they have heard. We pray and sing. Then we have tea and bread and return to the college.
Richard Tiu and I have supper with Pastor Lazarus and his wife Patricia; they were just married last December (2005). Tonight we eat African: chipoti (an African pancake) with a rice and meat mixture as well as a potato and bean stew. It is very good.
There is a prayer meeting in the evening for all the leaders of the church visitation teams.
Rev. Kim takes me downtown to Jet Travel Service to pay for my plane tickets to Uganda on March 22-24. Richard Tiu comes with us; we take our laptops with us so we can stop at the Nairobi Java House for lunch and free high speed internet access. Unfortunately when we arrive the service is down. We have lunch, but no internet. Perhaps it is just as well, as I was hoping to make contact with my family and it would have been 2:00 am in Edmonton by the time we were there.
We return home for a brief rest before we head out to for church family visitation. The church is divided in to four or five districts and we are going to have a fellowship time with a group of these families. The rains have made the roads very difficult to travel. There are either high rock s in the road or low points filled with water. Eben negotiates the school van very well over these difficult places. When we arrive we find ourselves on the outskirts of a coffee plantation, where most of the church members from this district work. The houses are made of cement blocks in a type of row housing with very small one-room units. A crowd of about 20-25 people, including college students gather for singing. We sing in Kiswahili, which is very easy to pronounce – every vowel is pronounced exactly the same way every time, a luxury which those who learn English do not enjoy. I preach from Psalm 34 and the sermon is translated by Pastor Bernard Akhwale. I am informed that he is not ordained and that the term “pastor” is used quite loosely here. Those who are ordained are called Rev. He has the spiritual oversight of these families. After sermon there is a request for prayer requests. One by one most of the people stand and ask for prayer for illnesses, an unsaved husband, etc. They are grateful for the Word they have heard. We pray and sing. Then we have tea and bread and return to the college.
Richard Tiu and I have supper with Pastor Lazarus and his wife Patricia; they were just married last December (2005). Tonight we eat African: chipoti (an African pancake) with a rice and meat mixture as well as a potato and bean stew. It is very good.
There is a prayer meeting in the evening for all the leaders of the church visitation teams.
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