I couldn’t bear to make it to the first service at the Lutheran church that starts at 6:00 am! I did take Joyce (the 8 y. o. niece) and her best friend to church for the 8:30 service. They were adorable in their pretty dresses. All the girls are in lovely dresses, with tulle, lace, and sparkles being cherished.
The first service ended late, and then the waiting people rush in to get a seat. It is packed. I was on a bench without a backrest in the very back of the church. When the 150 or more kids went to Sunday school, I moved up to a bench with a backrest. It was behind a pillar, so perhaps that is why the seat was open. Later, I was glad for the pillar, because when the sermon started, it was so loud that I had my fingers in my ears quite a bit! My decibel meter app registered a constant high 80’s and low 90’s level, with peaks up past 104 decibels. The NIH website states, “Long or repeated exposure to sounds at or above 85 dBA can cause hearing loss.” Yes, the sermon was “long”—at least 45 minutes if not closer to a hour. The service ended at noon, 3.5 hours later! Typically, I advise my students to bring earplugs to the Pentecostal worship services, but I didn’t have any this morning for a Lutheran service! Perhaps the pastor saw me at the end—as I do stick out as the only mzungu (white person)—and I think there may have been a comment in the free-flowing sermon, but my Kiswahili is still not able to track everything.
The girls and I walked back to Rebecca’s home (perhaps a kilometer) and I asked for recordings of the Lord’s Prayer by Joyce (who has the sweetest voice) and Rebecca in Kiswahili in order to memorize it fully.
Then, we had lunch. We chatted, practicing Kiswahili, and I had a short nap.
In the late afternoon, Pastor Nangole stopped by to adjust our plans for Monday morning. We were going to go to Arusha to visit the Bishop Elect in order for me to request a blessing for my research project. It is prudent to start with the bishop when I am planning to invite church-based organizations to partner (and receive an honorarium) in this research project. Due to the death of his cousin, there would be a funeral on Monday. Nangole and the bishop elect planned that I would come to the funeral and then there would be a moment or two to at least have a very brief introduction. Ok, I’m going to a funeral of a person I don’t know. Not only that, but this person was also a very big potato (I even heard this during the funeral). The current president of Tanzania was said to have cried as they had a formal sending of the body from Dar es Salam, where he was when he died in the hospital.
Mungu akubariki! (God bless you!)
You’re right. Joyce has the sweetest voice