Sunday, Church and St. Valentines

First, a word about blog mechanics… 

If you click on a picture, it will open as a larger picture in another window…  I’m uploading larger versions so that you can see in more detail, and it would be a terrible waste of time and bandwidth if no one is looking at them :)

Second, it is easy to leave comments...  At the bottom of each post there is a link to the comments...

That will take you to the comment page...  You can write in the box that says "Leave your comment"...  Then, choose how you want to be displayed...  If you click 'Anonymous' that's fine, just make sure you let us know who you are somewhere in your comment...  It's nice to know who is commenting :)  Comments are greatly encouraging to us, we're like kids at Christmas...  Seriously...

And now, on with the show –

This morning we woke up, had breakfast, and drove out to the Kisayhip Village church…  You’ll remember from earlier this week that Kisayhip is the village where we’re working…  This little building (on the right) is where the church meets…  About 175 people cram into one room!  They are energetic and loud and wonderfully joyful…  It’s very moving to be a part of a worship celebration that feels so different on an entirely different continent, but that shares the same focus and purpose…

The service lasted about 2 hours, but it didn't seem very long at all...  They worship with a lot of energy and enthusiasm...  One of the neatest things they did was during the 'offering' section of the service (above)...  They pass the collection plate around to everyone -- standard...  But then they invite people up by groups (usually a specific area of the village)...  Everyone is singing loudly, and when it's your turn to get up to go to the offering buckets up front you dance and sing and give your offering joyfully...  It was really wonderful to see a practice that makes space for the 'cheerful giver' that the Scriptures talk about...

After the service the men stayed in the building while the women and children went outside...  The church culture has a strong women's and children's ministry, but there really is a vacuum in the men's fellowship...  We stayed to encourage and challenge the men to be the leaders that their community needs them to be...  We were expecting 25-30 men and over 50 showed up!  We were excited and they were encouraged...

After church we went to a place called the Net Cafe in town...  We had a great time eating great food and enjoying each other's company...  Although, the whole place was decked out in 'Happy Valentines Day' decorations...  It created a bit of longing...

So then, we had the rest of the day off!  Time to rest and recharge...  A few of us went over to John and Corrie's house to spread some dirt to even out the road...  The roads here are really, really, unbelievably bad...  Basically dirt roads with hills and valleys where the rocks are...  There is no pavement in the neighborhood roads...  When the water from the rainy season comes it washes away a lot of the dirt and creates deep channels that make it really hard to drive...  There were huge mounds of dirt that John ordered sitting outside his gate, so we went over and tried to level things out a bit...  We worked in the afternoon and early evening and made some great progress...  There's still a lot of work to be done, but hopefully this was a good first step! 

We had a great dinner of chicken, vegetables, Pepper soup and garlic bread...  We're not losing any weight, which is of great concern to a few of the guys...  I guess we need to work a little harder tomorrow!