Feelin' the Spirit

The one-room church. The members are slowly building a new,
larger sanctuary as money allows. 

From Noel:

This past Sunday, we had the opportunity to worship at the local church in the village where Moses, our friend and guide for the week, grew up. We got in the cars Sunday morning and headed off. Within 15 minutes we arrived at the church building, which turned out to be a mud-walled room with a tin roof. We got out of the car to sounds of a worship team practicing. We had arrived at the time church was supposed to have been starting, but of course with “Africa-time,” times are always approximations, and our small group of 8 was the majority of the people there. However, worship began and people began showing up and filling the small room.

Pastor Charles helps lead the joyful singing.

We began with songs, and we all stood up not really sure what we should have been expecting. Worship went like this: a man stood up and began chanting songs through a microphone. They were very obviously praise songs and, to my surprise, every person in the room knew them well, because their responses were perfect and harmonious. The call and response went on for some time. We tried our very best to sing along with some of the Swahili words, but I personally couldn’t get the full sentences down, even after 50 repetitions. However, as the songs went on, we got more and more comfortable with the environment and the worship. The church members worshipped freely and passionately, with lots of call outs of “Amen” and hands raised and waving back and forth. After a while, it became easier to fall into my own form of worship and prayer, even if I couldn’t sing along as I would normally do.

After the worship, the main worship leader remained standing and also played the role of preacher (I am starting petition to have Pastor Jeff Chapman single-handedly lead the singing at Faith Presbyterian). He preached a beautiful sermon on the theme of peace in a couple of chapters of Isaiah. His English was very good, so he preached in English with a translator for the rest of the church.

After the sermon, I was ready for maybe a quick offering and then a benediction and then we would be off. Boy, was I wrong. We remained in church as different pastors came up and gave thanks and prayers, encouraged the church and each other, took offerings, thanked and introduced us, and worshipped. At certain points that seemed to me to be spontaneous, certain members of the small church would stand up and lead a call and response song or a choir would come up to the front and sing and dance and praise.

Moses Osoro with all the children gathered outside the church.

After a few hours of worship, Moses led us out of the church in the midst of the continuing worship. He informed us that if we wanted to stay for the whole church service, we would be there for another 4 or 5 hours at least. Despite it being a completely foreign church experience in the midst of my year of all kinds of church experiences, I left very encouraged by the passionate praise, mutual encouragement, and never-ending gratitude of the whole church. There wasn’t one member there that Sunday who was there simply because they felt some sort of Sunday morning obligation to be seated in a pew. They were all there because they felt a need to praise their Lord and Savior.

Pastors Charles and Benjamin show Jeff the footprint of their new building.
They told us they collect enough offering to pay them about $2 a week -- not nearly
enough to support their families. It is a labor of love for this community.