Today was Sunday. And a day full of church services-seriously, it was a solid 6 hours of church. I could definitely not handle that much church every Sunday, but today it was an incredible experience.
We started the morning at a special service of the Mission Malanje church. There was another group visiting from Belfast, Ireland. They were high school students from the Royal Belfast Academy volunteering in the school and hospital. They have been here for a week already and seemed to really be enjoying it too.
It was a 2 hour service packed with choir after choir signing and dancing. It was incredible to see. Scott gave the sermon and the Abusa (pastor) summarized it in Chichewa. I was thrilled to get to hear Scott preach here. His messages are even more impactful in a foreign country! (Although his jokes are a little hard for those who don’t speak English to understand. We enjoyed them though!) He spoke about how our hearts go “Wow” when we hold our children for the first time, see our beloved walk down the aisle, when we get off of the airplane in Malawi, and when we are each able to grow our faith by learning from each other.
From there, we rushed to our sister church, Lisenjala, for another 2+ hour service. I honestly have no idea how long that one lasted. It was a different feeling at Lisenjala-it felt like home. Not that we weren’t warmly welcomed at the Mission Malanje church, it was just much bigger and formal. At Lisenjala, there were familiar faces, names, and even wall decorations that our church has provided.
Scott again gave the sermon, Melissa gave several prayers, Steve also gave a prayer, and Bethany and I (Erin) gave readings. It got exciting when they announced a different scripture than what I had prepared, but Melissa had me covered and no one knew that I had been planning to read a completely different verse!
At this service, there was also a much stronger feeling of community. At times, it even seemed like a town hall meeting. There were several more choirs that sang-each more incredible than the first…which we were actually the first ones to sing. We had prepared to sing “I have decided to follow Jesus” in both English and Chichewa. But they requested 2 songs, so we threw in “This Little Light of Mine” at the last second. (Plans, scheduled, and times are very fluid here. Everyone has had to learn to think on their feet and go with the flow.” Our song was mediocre at best, but they appreciated our effort. The children’s choirs and the one with the drums were much more impressive. Think of an authentic African singing group and that is exactly what it was. I couldn’t believe I was actually seeing it live!
After the church service, the women of the church had prepared a wonderful meal for us. And then we had to rush off to start the learners retreat-an overnight retreat for our high school scholarship students. More about the Learners Retreat in the next post.
Meet Malawi 2017 