Dinner and a Serenade

This morning's church service was at the bottom of the hill along the main highway in the town of Ipogoro. We have been there twice but neither time to a service. The church is led by Pastor Nickson (I previously misspelled it as Nixon). The first service was at 7 AM so Dale and I headed down the hill. (I knew how to get there, two rights and a left at the microwave tower).

The first service lasted from 7 to 9 so that Dale could drive back up the hill to get the rest of the bunch. Last night we were joined by Greg and Sue Triplett from the St. Paul Area Synod office. Greg handles the finances for Bega Kwa Bega from the St. Paul end and Sue works for the church that is partnered with Pastor Nickson's Ipogoro church. They had just arrived on Saturday afternoon about 4 and still have sort of the deer in the headlight look. It will be great for them to see all the places they hear and write about.

The second service lasted from 10 AM to 1 PM and included baptisms,

blessing of a hand powered bike that Pastor Nickson got for one of his handicapped parisioners,

introduction of the bunch of Minnesotans that were sitting behind the alter rail (us), and a short talk by visiting educators from Rochester, Minnesota. One is a retired health educator talking to villages about cleanliness for cooking and eating, sleeping under mosquito nets and family planning. The other, a business educator talked at the first service about educating both boys and girls and how family planning would allow for more opportunities for their children. Both these women will be up at Tumaini University for the next few days as they prepare educational material for distribution to the small villages around here. At the benediction, Pastor Nickson presented Carrie and Dale with a beautiful print. By tradition, the cloth is wrapped around the recipient during the presentation.

Following the service, we were treated again to lunch at Pastor Nickson's. Tobie played with the pastor's son and eventually all of the kids were outside playing different games with the children of the senior choir members. The choir was practicing in the sanctuary during our lunch and it was a thrill to hear those booming voices singing classical chior pieces seranading us for the entire meal. The way they practice is interesting. They sit in a large circle, sort of by section. The director and a few of the members have copies of the music and nearly everyone has copies of the words written by hand in their notebooks. The director sings thru a section, part

by part and then they practice. She stops if a section is faltering, but usually they sign it straight thru. No notes, just words -- amazing.

Following lunch, the Triplets toured the church's facilities and Pastor Nickson discussed how his church is handling its finances. Integrity of church business has become a very important issue now that these churches are growing and employing and building and serving. Each church, large or small, has a treasurer and careful records are kept for all transactions. That was not the case previously as usually pastors handled the money.

Dinner was left overs and a game of Yatzee ended the evening. I have had troubles with my Internet this afternoon and so we were unable to check on e-mails and such. I suspect that Airtel (our 3G provider) is down to 1G or maybe 0G because speeds have been very slow. I checked on my account balance and it said I have 1.3 Gigabytes of download left until the 25th of October, but I am still unable to connect. We have a different service over at the Stiles apartment, so I might try that.