Wall of Jericho

This weekend, instead of just going to church, our group split up and went all over the place to contribute to area churches. Jen, Kim, Craig and I ended up at Africa Inland Church-Jericho in Nairobi, which turned out to be a good deal.

Can I first tell you, though—it was a very African day. Get this. Craig is supposed to preach at the young adult service, which begins at 7:30 a.m. What time does our rep from the church tell us to meet him? 7:45. At the Bomb Blast Site (what they call the memorial for the U.S. Embassy that was blown up in ’98), which is about 5 or 10 minutes from the church, he says. Weird, right? It gets better. What time does he actually show up? 8 o’clock. What time do we get to the church? 8:30. That’s right, an hour after the service began, and half an hour before the next one is scheduled to start. Remember, Craig is the sermon here. But Africans don’t rush. They played a few more songs, read a few more announcements (last week, announcements went on for 45 minutes) and then introduced all of us before Craig got the mic for the message. This was at 20 ‘til. He had to be done by 8:55.

No one was upset. Not even a little.

And, for the English service next, they were supposed to have a guest preacher… who never showed up. Our rep guy got the nod five minutes before he went up (this is after an hour or so of singing/announcements/scripture reading.) Was anyone mad? Nary a one. Just like for the Swahili service after that, when no one raised an eyebrow as, probably 45 minutes into the thing, a crowd of like-clothed folks shuffle in through the doors at the front of the church. It was the no-show preacher. He brought his own choir. HILARIOUS.

I just sit back and think of these things in the context of the American church and how people are up in arms if you have more than a sprinkling of announcements or infringe on their Sunday football game. I can’t even imagine what we would’ve done had we been faced with the more than 10 minutes of nothingness as Choir Part Two noisily yet unhurriedly set up its microphones. Mutiny the pastor?

Anyway, going back… Craig was preachin’ it up! Oh man it was great stuff. He’d prepared a half hour sermon, and he had about 13 minutes, but the guy was like a master up there. He talked about the power of praise—first, in a story from the OT (which I have… forgotten…), then in the story about Paul and Silas breakin’ free from jail, then, in the story of Jericho. (Duh, we’re at Jericho church.) At the end, he asked everyone to stand up ‘cause we were going to give a shout of praise to the Lord, sort of like Joshua & Co. did outside Jericho, praising the Lord for giving them the city. So we were shouting for the Lord’s victory in our lives, not only in the blood of Jesus, but over the sins that bind us (breaking free from chains, as Paul and Silas did). Anyway, it was awesome. I wish this little paragraph could do it justice. Just know there was some powerful praising going on.

I spent the English service over at children’s church, which was great because I got to work with the little 3-year-olds. The only problem was, said 3-year-olds didn’t speak English. At all. But the teacher lady had me introduce myself a few times, which eased the kids’ days a little bit, because they no longer had to crane their necks around to look at me in the back of the room. They didn’t really understand the Andrea/Andi thing, calling me “Handy.” Which is totally fine. Our whiny “aye” sound is hard for them. And they were far too cute to hold a grudge against. It was great times.

The only bad thing was that we called the pastor “Joseph” all day. His name was Joshua.

Whoops.