Church

So yesterday was a pretty good time, we went to a club and swam, ate burgers, chilled in the sun, etc. But before all of that, we went to the Salvaition Army Church; it was quite an experience. Paul and I were the only two Mzungus in the entire church of 200 or so people and the entire service was in swahili except for words like "praise" and "worship." So Paul and I stood when everybody else did and sat when they did, and we even waved our arms around a little bit but stopped cause we didn't want our pasty arms being seen by everybody behind us (we were in the second row so that was a lot of people). The singing was interesting and they even had a little dance in the middle of the service, not very intense moves but they were in sync and that's what counts. I even sang How Great Thou Art in swahili which was fun, although Rose's kids were staring at me the whole time but I think I showed them what's what.

The whole service was a little more than two hours long and it was all interesting except for one thing that kind of annoyed me, the sermon or the "message." It wasn't like most services I've been to where the pastor or priest attempts to teach a message by speaking to the congregation. It was more a man, yelling at the congregation, running around the entire church shouting into his mic. He sat in a chair, ran up on stage, walked in defined circles, hid behind a wall, and the whole time screamed swahili into a mic for half an hour. He got pretty close to Paul and I a couple times and we could see he was drenched in sweat. Throughout the entire sermon, people would yell "Amen" or "Alleluia" from different parts of the church and everybody seemed to enjoy it. It was a very different experience for me; I've never enjoyed having God screamed at me but it was interesting to see the different responses from the people in the congregation. I'm glad I went because it taught me a lot about the religion in this culture but it would be tough for me to sit through two more hours of that.