This is Africa.
This month we are preaching. There is church every single night.
Here is a typical day:
We sleep in a cramped apartment, but it’s clean except for the mess that we’ve made. And we have mattresses for the floor. I’m not sure what is on my mattress to make it smell so bad, but I try not to worry about it (or touch it) because it gives me great sleep! We usually wake up around 6:30am for a morning run. For the first whole week we were an hour early for everything because no one knew that there was a time change coming from Uganda. That, on top of everything in Africa happening at least an hour late, drove us crazy the first week. We got a good laugh when two of our teammates had to go into the city and called to let us know that all our clocks were off.
A morning jog requires energy for running, waving, and saying “I am fine, how are you!” We are famous. I’m not kidding. EVERYONE stares at us EVERYWHERE we go. Especially on our runs before the kids get to school. People run out of their houses to watch us and yell ‘Muzungu!!!’..which means ‘white person’! They wave and try to touch us. Sometimes they’ll even start jogging with us. That’s always my favorite! One morning Andrea and I looked behind us and we had 12 kids jogging down the dirt road with us!
After our run it’s time to start the walk to breakfast. It’s a 30 minute walk to and from where we eat all our meals. The first half of the walk I try to stare at the ground because I can feel the eyes of all the adults in town watching the 8 Muzungus walk down the road. But the second half is when the kids come again! Every day we walk past a little dirt mound where 3 toddlers wait for us to come and touch their hand as we pass by. Then as we make the turn up to Pastor’s house where we eat, the neighborhood kids sprint down the street towards us to give us hugs around our legs. I look forward to this everyday; not to mention breakfast is delicious! Bananas, Chipati (flat bread), hard boiled egg, and milk tea.. same meal each morning.
We laugh at Pastor because he’s crazy and the tallest skinniest man you’ll ever see. He says every morning, “Good morning children of God, you are Beautiful and Awesome.” Communication has been one of the hardest parts of this month. Not English, just culture. For example, one day we were supposed to go to a wedding with Pastor, be ready at 10am. He finally came to get us at 2:30pm and the wedding wasn’t even set up. I LOVE punctuality, I don’t get this culture. Anyways. We make our 30 minute walk home after breakfast.
During the day we do random things. Sometimes there are weddings, funerals, door to door or market evangelism, and sometimes we just have the day off until 5pm. At 5pm we make our walk back to Pastor’s for dinner and then it’s time for church! Church is not like it is at home. People go CRAZY! It lasts for 2 hours every night. An hour of which is dancing. And man do they get down, literally, sometimes there are people dancing on all fours..moving their bodies in ways I didn’t know was possible.
Preaching is SO fun. One of us preaches every night with a translator and sometimes we perform a song. These people get pumped to hear the Gospel! I did my sermon on Joy. If you say something they like, everyone claps. If I say ‘Hallelujah!’, they scream ‘AMEN!’ and the more and more times I say it, the louder and louder they yell, AMEN!! So much fun. I love their passion. Even the kids dance all around and pray with their hands in the air.
That’s pretty much the end of our day. By that time it’s dark and we have a long walk home. I spray myself with bug spray and cozy up on my stinky, comfy mattress to sleep. There are things I love and things that drive me nuts about Africa. I’m happy to be here and I think that the God is really using our presence in this church. There is never a dull moment, that’s for sure.
