Sunday, February 19, 2012

Today we visited  village churches near the seminary.  Each of the instructors and volunteers have been paired with 8 to 10 students in what is called a "Pastoral Care Group"  This group meets once a week on Wednesday morning (7:30 am) in place of chapel and makes preparations for visiting a local village church they have been assigned. Eventually I am told, the theological majors in this group will lead the service, say prayers and read the scriptures.  Maybe one or two of them will even give the sermon.
These churches do not have a pastor or anyone who is ordained  or trained to lead their meetings and services.
They are usually new churches or ones that have lost a pastor and they are all Anglican.  David and I both have different churches and Pastoral Groups.  We have been paired with another instructor who has experience in leading the Pastoral Group and attending the local churches. David's church is named St. Mark's and my church is called Muungamo(not sure if this is the village name or the church name). 
From a western point of view both churches are very poor without for example a proper alter, real doors, or even enough benches in St. Mark's case.  My church did have song books and everyone had their Bibles to follow along with the readings.  Yes the services were in Swahili only and were very long (over two hours at my church).  Muungamo Church had a wonderful  choir (actually two choirs), one that sang traditional African church music and one that did what I would call a more tribal version with large and small drums, whistles, and some sort of rice shaker.  Each one was wonderful and entertaining in its own way.  My church had no road into it so we followed the edge of corn field (which was dried up due to the lack of rain).  Everyone except the four in our car walked to service from the village.  The same for David's church. 
David took the camera today to take pictures of his church.  Next Pastoral Group Sunday I will take the camera and share.
I have included several pictures of David's car, the fence, gate and the house in the back.  (Note the cinder blocks where all the lizards live!) He was very happy to have the guard on the car today due to all the brush he had to drive through. Picture one is of Shaking Hands after service, Picture two is of drummer ladies, Picture three is of the church, the next three are of the gate, fence and car (cattle guard on front).  We are known as Fort Knox because of the gate!