Church

It is still so very new for us. We are attending a local AIC church at the moment in Mombasa. We decided on this particular one because the academic dean at Pwani is also an associate pastor at the church. He and his wife have been so understanding of our move here and we have appreciated their sensitivity as we try to get ourselves established.

We have been attending the Swahili service which is good because we are hearing Swahili. But, it is also hard because we are hearing Swahili! It is also hard because we are the only white people in a group of 300 and we stand out! We are still unsure of how to act in church, how to appropriately care and treat our children, what is distracting and what is not, yah pretty much everything. The service also goes 3 solid hours! The singing is amazing in Swahili and we enjoy the music more in this service than their English service. Something we have both noticed is the incredible reverence of those worshiping. It is challenging and refreshing to be apart of.

These are all initial observations for us and we are still figuring out how to think about the service and the church. So, take it for that as you read. The length of the service is definitely an issue for us as westerners. It's hard but it is good for us too. Church is more about the people of God being together here. It's not about 5 minutes scheduled for this song and so on. A great example of this is that everytime the choir does their special song at the church. Almost always the keyboard player does not pick the right track or beat they want as background for their song. Then there is silence and he works on it. Tries another and no that is not the right one either. It could be 5 minutes until he gets the right one and the thing that struck me is that no one flinches. No one looks around in embarrassment. No one is sweating because it isn't working (although we are all sweating for other reasons being the heat!). Everyone just sits and waits no glances or knowing smiles. It's fine. The sermons are generally intense even though I have no idea what they are saying. But, they like to yell. Volume seems to be important in singing and in preaching! We are still waiting to feel embraced by the church. We do not have people really coming up to us after to speak to us. One of the elders generally comes and talks to us otherwise we need to bridge the gap which is quite hard! But, this might be a cultural thing we still don't understand at all...we are going to sit down with our pastor and chat with him and kind of debrief our questions. He has a pretty good understanding of westerners and will I am sure have some helpful things to say.

Thanks for your prayers we appreciate them so much.