Church on Sunday

I have to tell you all about church on Sunday. The Moshi Church of Christ meets in an old theater. The stage is decorated with blue and white material, the podium is down front and everyone sits all spread out - just like at home. There were about 50 people there and the service was in Swahili but they had a song book so we could sing along in Swahili. Thankfully the song leader would also say the song numbers in English. The singing was great!! Many of the song names were familiar but the tunes were different. We sang those Swahili words just like we knew what we were singing!! Toward the beginning of the service there was a time when visitors stood to introduce themselves. Each of us stood and tried to use our best Swahili but our best is not very good. Everyone was thrilled we even tried to speak Swahili. When someone would pray I could pick out words like "Baba" which is Father and "Asante" which is thanks so I got the general meaning of the prayer. I sat next to Francis, a man who works for Phil, in church and he translated most of the sermon for all of us. He told us the Bible verses and in a whisper told us about what the preacher was saying. This preacher could find a job in any respectable Southern Baptist church!! There were times when he was very animated. During the announcement time they announced we were visiting from America and in English apologized that the whole service was not translated into English but they hoped the Spirit was speaking to our hearts. We decided that the spirit was speaking to us through Francis - he was our spirit for the day. After church everyone came up to introduce themselves - they wanted to practice English and we wanted to practice Swahili - it was all very interesting and I look forward to church next week. Maybe we will know a song or two in Swahili before we return.