Africa: Part 10 "Church Like I've Never Seen"

School room where we had Sunday school

Sunday!  I know a lot of us had been waiting for a day of worship for a while now. Our days had been so busy there was little time to debrief as a team and devotionals were almost nonexistent.  We started today with a wonderful breakfast and then headed off in groups to teach Sunday school before church.  Sunday school and church were open to the community, which is almost exclusively Muslim, so we were excited to see who would show up today.

I was with the teenage group and we were teaching the same "Gold" message we had brought to each group we ministered to along the trip.  The group was mostly boys and from their facial expressions seemed very uninterested in what we had to say... until we asked them to share.  These boys heard our message loud and clear and were more honest about their feelings than our other groups.  To hear them talk about how it makes them sad that nobody knows the real them was heartbreaking and also a universal feeling here in Africa and all over my local high school back home.  I could tell by the answers they were giving they are getting a solid biblical education at Canaan's and for that I was grateful.

After Sunday school we headed over to church and settled in.  As with everywhere we went, we sat in the plastic chairs up front with the wooden benches lined up behind us. I was in the last row of chairs before the benches started and the room was packed so there was almost no space between the ladies sitting behind me and my chair.  As the worship started we rose to sing and dance with the crowd.  The only problem was we didn't know any of the songs.  I was a little sad because I was ready to sing and found it hard to join in, but to watch the room worship with such zeal was awesome.  It went on and on, and as we neared the middle of the worship time I started to hear some commotion behind me.  I didn't want to be rude so I didn't look for quite a while.  Soon it became too much for me not to look as someone started kicking my chair.  When I turned around, I was surprised to see a woman thrashing on the floor yelling and screaming.  There were about five other women trying to contain her, but she was strong.  I had never seen for my own eyes anyone that was possesed, but I was pretty sure that was the case and after speaking to the pastor later that day at lunch I found this to be true.  As the women were lifting her by her limbs to carry her outside, she turned to me and began spitting on the back of my head.  Well, that was something new.  I've been spit up on in church before, but never spit on... and certainly not by someone who is possesed.  I'm not going to lie, it freaked me out a bit.  I found out later that she was carried outside where they performed an exersisim of sorts and now the woman is okay.

 This church was full of new experiences for me today.  Watching the hearts pouring out during worship was moving, and the way they take offerings was interesting.  There were a few offerings taken and with each one they would ask members (not us guests) to bring the offering forward.  If they didn't have it with them, they could run home now and get it, there was time... this process took a while.  If they didn't want to go home, they could come up and sign a paper saying they would bring it back later.  I liked the way they gave every opportunity to tithe.  There would be no excuses today other than not wanting to give anything.

Pastor Isaac 

Pastor Issac, who's life story could be a book and probably should be, gave a message about bringing all of us together (the American's and his congregation).  I liked how he call all of us out on our stuff.  He called the Americans out for being, well... Americans, and he called his people out for sometimes viewing foreigners coming in as nothing more than money.  After this time he gave us to *ehem* humble ourselves, he asked our three men to come and "preach".  The first guy to get up is a teenager who just graduated high school, but he has seen more life than a lot of us.  He spoke beautiful truth about how God loved him through all the years he walked so far away from Him.  The next man that got up spoke from personal experience about how it's never too late to come to know Jesus.  He was a man who strayed from his family and divorced his wife.  After finding God, he came back to his family and remarried his wife... a powerful message to this community and to our own communities back home.  The last man from our team to get up was a man I had admired this whole trip.  He and his wife had been a constant bright energy every single moment of the trip.  I had seen him be humble and kind to everyone on the team, play soccer with the boys until he might collaps, and always knew the names of the people carrying our bags or dishing up watermellon.  I was not prepared for the Greg I was about to see on the pulpet.

Greg stepped up on the stage and I was prepared to hear another testomony, but that is not the message God had for him to share today.  He continued along with Pastor Issac's message about coming together as one group in the eyes of God.  In the middle of sharing scripture and preaching God lead him to abandon his message and he asked us all to stand and pray for one another.  With in minutes, he had us push chairs and benches aside and called whom ever needed prayer to come forward and find one of our team members so we could pray for them.  Now, had this been day 1-5 I would have been nervous and wanting to run out of the room to avoid something like this because it was not comfortable, but it was day 11 and I was more flexible now to go where the spirit was leading.  The first few women that came to me, I laid hands on them and prayed as best I knew how.  My prayers were not fancy or even well constructed, but they were honest.  As the time was wrapping up, a teenage girl pushed through the crowd and fell into my arms.  At that exact moment, I kid you not, I literally felt her pain as if it were my own.  Imediately I burst into tears blubbering some sort of pray that was probably half sentences because this pain was so intense. I have no idea how long we were together because all sense of time was lost in that moment. We embraced and cried until our time was up.  That prayer for her was probably the purest time of prayer I have ever had.  I have never cried out like that before and never been so sure I was being heard.

Church wrapped up and we headed to lunch before our group was going on a Nile boat tour.  I will add a few picture of that because it was beautiful, but it was just a bit of sight seeing and not as interesting as the other stuff we were doing.  We went to the source of the Nile, that was neat, and then had another 18 hour long dinner.  Okay, it wasn't actually 18 hours, but in an African resturant it just seems that way.  There is no order to how your order is taken or delivered.  You could order and wait 45 minutes for some food to start arriving and people could be done with their dessert before your dinner has even made it's way infront of you.  The last person to order might even get their food first. Not my favorite part of Africa :)

As we made our way back to Canaan's, I still couldn't get my mind off the spit that had sprayed the back of my head that morning and without proper showers was probably mostly still in there.  While talking with my leader, what I knew to be true in my heart was reiterated in prayer for me.  While this was something new for me, it had no more power than I was willing to give it.  So that night as I lay in my bed, my prayers took away all power that experience had to scare me.  Another peaceful nights sleep in Africa.