Sunday

Sundays – ‘a day of rest’

Church starts at sa sadi (3rd hour… their day starts at 6am)… but our ‘western’ concept of time and ‘starting times’ are much different. Although things not really starting on time is very handy when you are delayed on your way to church by greeting people, a 5min walk can take as much as half an hour!

I very much enjoy the services and as we grow familiar with the songs it is more and more normal to worship God in a different language (or two – Swahili as well). Every Sunday we have the pleasure of hearing the youth choir, the Sunday school choir as well as the adult choir! Barbara and I hope to one day be able to be in the youth choir and to be able to sing all of the words to the songs (we are part of their practices throughout the week but often sing ‘la la la’ while clapping and dancing!)

After church you greet everyone (literally), and shake everyone’s hand (another goal of mine is to be able to remember everyone’s names) and everyone disperses.

Food making time, eating time, and then it is time for youth singing at 2 …(2 ish or 3 ish). Now I have asked a few times why we meet during the hottest (today its 38C in the cool part of the house) part of the day, but it continues as it is. This last Sunday we collectively decided NOT to meet in a building but rather sat in the shadow of the church where we could benefit fully from the wind (inside there is little or no breeze and is just TOO hot).

Then we start in the direction of home never knowing how long it will take to get there.

Sometimes we have a house full of visitors; neighbors, sisters or youth… sometimes we just read Pride and Prejudice out loud to each other (with appropriate quotes from the movie along with accents!), or sometimes we have a goat in the house… Barito is his name (all goats have names).

Then comes my favourite time of day – sunset. Every day God blesses us with such brilliant colors, everytime unique.

It is amazing that when ever you start to count your blessings they begin to be more numerous that you had ever imagined! So on the days when it is too hot, sand gets in your eyes and then you run into a mob of rude children I remember... “count your blessings, count them one by one, count your many blessing to see what God has done.”.

Waaqi si ebisin! Gabbra for “God Bless You”… He has and He will continue to do so.

Sabdio Isacko