Church for the Ages

Blogger's Intro: This afternoon I received a phone call from Pastor Tom. I was still at the church, the phone rang, and I heard his voice, "Hey, Ivanildo, this is Tom from Africa, over." The connection was not the best, but enough to understand that he wanted to let me know that they had another blog entry to send but there was another power outage in Bangui. He was waiting for somebody to call him to let him know when power was back at the ICDI office in Bangui.

Tom spoke well of the Team. He said everyone was in good spirit and good health. The call was after they had been to church. I decided to wait in the hopes that the blog entry would finally get here, and indeed it did, and what follows is the story of the Team's experience going to church today. I hope you will read carefully. Your heart will be moved.

Tom asked us to pray for the trip to PAMA tomorrow. It's a five to six hour drive and he asked us to pray for safety on the roads. Remember, Bangui is about six hours ahead of us, so you should pray for the trip before you go to bed tonight. Or, if you are like me, by the time you hit the sac early this morning, the team will be hitting the road! And by the way, pray for a miracle regarding the sat phone... Pastor Ivanildo Trindade.

It's Sunday morning in Bangui. Somehow I had a feeling that this wasn't going to be my usual Sunday routine. And yep, I'm quick like that, because church in Africa isn't like church in Wooster. Want to come along? Here's a taste.

We rolled out of the sack about 6:15 AM, grabbed some showers. A parenthesis here about the showers: they are not exactly what you think of when you think of a shower. That is unless you hold your breath in the shower when you shower at home. See, a shower here in Bangui can only be loosely described as shower. Because of the water quality you can't sing (which might be good for some who can't sing anyway), but the reason here is that if you open your mouth you invite some water "bugs" to come in and take up residence, so what you try to do is keep the water out of your mouth so as not to ingest any of those not so friendly water born parasites.

After showers we headed over to the main house where we eat together, plan out the day and have a treat together, oatmeal! Man was it tasty... Once breakfast comes to a close, it's back to the rooms for some individual morning devos before we launch into the day.

The time is now 8:30 and we load into a pick-up truck and an SUV and begin the drive to church. Along the way we come to the "five kilometer market," called that because it's five kilometers from the center of town, which is absolutely packed. There are so many people that we can barely drive through the street. Finally, we break through and continue our drive out to the area where Pastor Tom will be preaching this morning, a church that is now pastored by a fella whom Tom's mom had in her Sunday school class back in the day, pretty cool.

As we pull in next to the church, clearly we are the only ones that will be driving to church today as there is already a crowd forming, but no doubt everyone in this congregation walked to church this morning. We open the doors of our two vehicles and again it's an overwhelming scene of people and children just so very glad to greet us and I'm pretty sure that each and every person, young and old, got their hand shaken by every single one of us as a way of welcoming us to their church. (I'd recommend this as a way of welcoming new people to Grace, but I'm afraid they might just gas it and go, since I actually had to sort of push people back with the door as I was trying to get out).

Once we headed into church the first thing I noticed was that this particular church was pretty progressive as they had this nice patio on the front of their church. Nope. Not a patio, but rather a building project they are endeavoring to do and simply haven't had the funds to go any further.

Next thing that caught my eye as I walked in was how dark it was inside the church. I looked up toward the ceiling and sure enough they had light fixtures, "Oh, I see, the power is off again and so no light for inside of church today. Now I got it."

The walls are a sort of an odd greenish blue, the seating is wood benches except for several outside type of plastic chairs that had been set-up for us in the front as a way of honoring our attendance. Fellas sit on one side of the church, ladies on the other. I'm one chair from the front sitting next to one of the churches choirs. I'm sitting by the teen choir and diagonally across from me is their adult choir. Wow! They can really belt it out. I recorded them singing a hymn and so if you'll drop into four14 on August 26th when we share stories, pictures and video from Africa, you just might get a chance to hear it.

There was some congregational singing which when everybody got it going was a very cool deal. Joy was raising the roof, that was simple to see. There were some announcements, Scripture reading, a special choir number and then the offertory. These are of course American words as everything was in Sango and a heck of a lot more of just everybody being involved in the service was what happening at church.

Each one of our team members got to stand up before the church and say one of the like three Sango phrases that we know, "Hello, my name is Bob." And then the whole church says your name back to you. As a visiting Pastor I got to go first and I failed miserably. Bad Sango is one thing, but bad Sango in RAD high speed just left the church sort of staring at me, yeah it was awkward, but thankfully Tom covered for me.

There are no musical instruments in the church, everything is sung a capella so you can imagine my surprise and delight when I figured out that the offertory (really it was the song that lead into the offering) was a large group of children doing a bit of an African stroll/strut. I don't dare use the word "dance" because this was a Grace Brethren church. Anyway all of these children, probably 50 in number, accompanied by three African women, sang with all their might as they strolled towards the front of the church.

It was really sweet. Funny how sweet sometimes turns bitter when you least expect it. A fella from ICDI was sitting next to me doing some translating along the way trying to keep me in the loop, when he leaned over to me and said: "This is our choir from our orphan ministry." I couldn't believe my eyes. There were so many absolutely beautiful faces, children of all ages, sweet, innocent singing with all their hearts to Jesus. Then my ICDI friend leans over again and informs me that this is roughly only half of the group.

Orphan aid is currently unavailable in this area and so this small local church has taken it upon themselves to care for the children of their region. In fact the Pastor himself is currently housing and caring for eight orphans in his small home. Again, humbling and heart breaking all in the same flood of emotion.

And just then when I least expected it, Tom spoke something in English which surprised me because by this time we had been in church a good hour and half and I was more or less just sort of numb to lots of words zipping around that I didn't understand. "What was that Tom? They want me to pray? Pray for what, for who?" I was introduced as the youth pastor from Ohio and so they were asking me to stand and pray for the large group of orphans there standing everywhere around me. Instantly I smelled the hand sanitizer gushing from the pores in my hands as my heart raced and I stood to my feet in a sea of tiny faces. I bowed my head and then as my heart, mind and soul came together, I was just about to pray when something like rush of thought shoot through my mind: "What do you really pray for a bunch of orphans anyway? Be warm, be filled? Hope you have a nice day?" I truthfully don't remember what I said as I can only claim Romans 7 as to what got me through.

Once the Orphan choir finished singing, the offering was taken except rather than passing any sort of plates, different people of the church came forward and held a cloth sack that had a word on the front. The words were indicators of different people groups that would be giving that morning. There was the Deacon bag, and there was a youth bag, a choir bag, a children's bag and several others that I just simply could not make out.

All the time this is going on the choir is bringing it and I couldn't help but notice the excitement on the faces of person after person who were making their way to the front of the church during their respective time to give to their bag. One particular scene that caught my eye was this extremely old, at least she looked old, woman, who slowly made her way to the front, slender in build, carrying a slender cane to help guide her steps. She reached out her hand and dropped in what looked like barely a coin or two. I thought to myself: "I've just met the widow who has given her mite." It was so crystal clear that giving today was coming not out of their plenty but out of their want. It was very moving.

Finally, now about two hours in, Tom is introduced and he took the pulpit and brought a phenomenal challenge. I don't know what he said, but people were tracking with him, engaged in the challenge he was bringing. It was a good feeling. Tom made us proud back at the Wooster Grace.

There was closing prayer, in which our team was prayed for as the church wanted to partner with us regarding our travels to Pama tomorrow, a closing song and people began exiting the building. Once outside, I felt like a celebrity. People asking me for my address, so many kids just wanting to shake hands with me. That might quite possibly have been my 7 minutes of fame that everybody is supposed to get sooner or later, and if so, I'm glad I got mine when I did.

Still surrounded by people, expecting to leave soon, Tom called for me to come to the Pastor's house. As I walked in, some of the ladies of the church had prepared a dinner for us as a way of saying thanks for the work we were doing. On the menu was Gozo (a paste of manioc root, the main staple of the CAR), peanut Manioc leaf sauce, rice, some meat sauce and a cold Coca-cola chaser. Lunch was served for all 12 of us and everyone on the team realized the sacrifice that people had made to present this gift to us.

Just as a side note, the pictures I took of us eating were from standing in the middle of the

Pastor's house looking right and looking left. You can see Sonia in both pictures to help you get a better perspective of the actual size of this home. Remember I said the Pastor housed eight orphans in his home? Crowded probably doesn't really describe it. Especially when I found out a bit later that the total number of people living in that house was not eight, but actually twenty-three! Wife, mother and father in-laws, mother and father, orphans and who else I have no idea. I couldn't believe it! Jim was sitting next to me and said, "Most people's bedrooms in America are bigger than this house."

We thanked everyone, stepped outside and grabbed a quick photo with some of the church leadership, our hosts and a couple of new friends that we had made. Total time at "church" now about four hours and not a single person minded. We loaded up and waved to the many faces that lined the road as we drove away. This was church alright, church that we will not soon forget.

Thanks for standing with us.
RAD

P.S. Tomorrow we pull out early for Pama and a whole new set of experiences.
The sunset picture is from the other night looking toward Pama from Bangui. Clearly, we're not in Wooster anymore.

Blogger's note: RAD included a note:
"I don't know. We still are having no success with the SAT phone. This could be our last entry until next Monday when we return from Pama. I'm praying that somehow we will be able to get it fixed this afternoon or Monday morning before we leave.Pray along with us, RAD." It's obvious he is thinking about that SAT phone. Let's pray that will be fixed!