African timing is very different to English. It was planned that i would speak, maybe at two celebrations for new chiefs on Sunday. Having got to the first, everything was running very late and wasn’t going to start until 1.00pm, so we went to Pastor Nedson’s home church, in the village where he was brought up and arrived as a church service was happening. After a while Miriam was invited to say a few words of introduction and then I was invited to preach, off the cuff and translated by Nedson. They normally have sermons lasting upto an hour, but they got a truncated one that morning!!
We then headed off back to the celebrations calling briefly at one and then spending the next few hours at the second. I was ready to speak but the celebrations went on much longer before the official part, and so ended up not speaking at either. That was a relief as there were all sorts of dignitaries there and thousands of people, but we had fun watching some traditional dancing and singing, and were once again given a good welcome and some of the best seats in the house!
Yesterday was a quieter day, reading in the morning and then helping out with a club for the children of blind parents in the afternoon, at which Miriam gave a 10 minute talk and we played games with them. There were about 20 children there, who would otherwise be on the streets begging.
Today we were planning on going to a juvenile offenders centre which Nedson visits regularly, and again we were meant to speak, but were only told late last night. However, it has been raining hard all day and the roads would be bad, so it was cancelled, which I was quite relieved about, as I have got a dodgy tummy today, and can’t be too far from a toilet! Please pray for our health as we are going to all sorts of places and being offered food and drink which we know nothing about – with Miriam’s nut allergy this is a problem, but also whether the food has been prepared properly.
So many things planned or talked about, but it doesn’t all happen…which can be frustrating to our western minds and way of working, but who’s to say we have it right, everything here is much more laid back.
I would put up photos, but the internet here isn’t fast enough, so these will have to wait until we are elsewhere.