Dancing, singing, drums, yelling, healings. Welcome to church in Africa!
Our second week at Kedesh Pastor Bonga, a man that serves several churches in the area, asked if we would be willing to go to his church on Sunday and do a short presentation. So, later that night our two teams got together to organize what we would do on Sunday. We figured out who would talk and decided to perform two skits that would heavily address the effect satan has on their society, in particularly through the Kunanderuos or Witch Doctors.
On Sunday morning Pastor Bonga pulled up in his bright blue Bronco to take us to the church. The vehicle was to small to fit all of us, so we squished together while the others waited for a second trip.
We drove and drove for about 40 minutes through villages and rice patties. Finally we turned into the churches little village and I immediately got really excited. We were surrounded by traditional grass huts. It was like the jungle cruise at Disneyland but so much better. This was the “real” Africa I’d been hoping to see when we had arrived on the continent in mid-December.
We drove down a dirt trail, which never looked wide enough for a vehicle to get through and finally came upon the church, which, like the huts around it, was also made of grass and mud. All I could think was “Cool!”
We were dropped off and some of the men immediately brought out plastic chairs for us to sit and wait in while Pastor Bonga returned to Kedesh to get the others, but instead of just sitting and waiting Ashley and I decided to walk around the village and take pictures instead.
It didn’t take long before we heard drums inside of the church, then singing and then the voice of children. I walked around to the door to take a look inside. Women were on the left, men on the right and the children were dancing in the middle. Church was starting! We went in to find seats, and as I was walking to a bench in the back of the women’s section, one of the church pastors got my attention and guided us to some seats and the front of the mens section, a real honor.
After about 30 minutes of singing and dancing, the others arrived and the service finally began. First, there was more singing and dancing, performances by the youth and testimony’s by members, then the floor was handed over to us. Even though the space was cramped we managed to get all the songs and skits off without a hitch and with both sides of the service combined, about 5 hours after starting we were finally finished and closed out the service by getting up and attempting to do an African line dance with the youth.
This had been the “real” African church experience I had been hoping for and, not only did we get an awesome service, we got an awesome location. Both skits we did were received enthusiastically, as was Kaitlyn’s testimony, so we really hope what we shared was taken to heart and change was desired, and that’s the hard thing about only visiting a church for one Sunday, we’ll never know if what we said will have a lasting effect, but we certainly pray it did, and know that Pastor Bonga will continue to shepherd his flock in the right direction.
