soulful singing, sunscreen, and sweating

Well since no one here wants to blog about what we have been doing, I will. On sunday we went to a local church that two of the day volunteers here on the ship invited us to. We walked down the dock and waited at the gate for our ride. Little did we know that all 5 of us plus the pastor and our day volunteer friend all had to fit into a 5 person car. It was quite the ride! I sat in the front seat with the Pastor and our friend, and the rest of the family packed into the back seat! We got there and went into the building, it was not that big, but it had nice instruments, a sound system, fans, plastic chairs for the congregation, and nice leather couches in the front for the pastors. I think we got there at 8:30 and that was "Sunday School", which is not like sunday school at home, it is for adults. One of the pastors talked in English and someone translated into french. Then at 9am, more people came and we sang lots and lots of songs, you loose count because they all just run into one another. I knew some of them because we have been singing them at some of the ministries we go to with the kids, but most of them were just a repeat of one sentence for the whole song, so once you had the sound of what you thought they were saying you were singing along too. We could also catch on to the Hallelujahs and were pretty good at singing those as well. What a charismatic church, everyone was singing like there was no tomorrow, and dancing up a storm, and then there is these 5 white people standing still with no sense of rhythem or movement, so we were the so called "black sheep" in the group, although in this case we were the white sheep. Throughout the singing we would stop and pray and just when you think they are done praying they say "in jesus name, amen....." but then they would just keep on praying and they would do that at least 7-10 times before the prayer ended! We would do some more singing, praying and more singing. Then the pastor that drove us to the church stood up to talk. But even though he was speaking english, sometimes I could figure out if there was any english being said! It was hard to understand what he was saying but all of a sudden he would get all worked up and repeat the same word over and over and over again, and the congregation would get all worked up until then he moved on. It was quite the service. All the kids had to stay outside and just play so that they would not bother the adults. By this time it was about noon when the service came to a close. The pastor drove us home to the ship again and once again I was so thankful for the wonderful air conditioning on the ship!

We had some lunch and we went up to deck 8 where they had a family potluck and talked with people for a while. We went to church on the ship then at 7pm, and by the time it was over we were BEAT! I am pretty sure we all were in bed by 9! Monday we didn't really do anything except that mom and Brett walked to the fabric market where mom had ordered that dress, but when they got there at 10:30 it was not ready so they talked with the sewers and they said to come back at three. So since Brett went that morning I went with mom to get there at three. When we were walking up the dock to the road a mercy ships vehicle passed us and jokingly my mom yelled out "hospitality centre?". Well low and behold they stopped, reversed and came and picked us up. In the end I think we went farther away from where we wanted to go than taking a short cut, but it sure beat walking in the heat and humidity at 3pm! Well guess what, when we got there......no dress, so we took a seat and asked when they said it was going to be ready. The lady at the store said soon, so we waited and waited and waited and waited until 4:30 when we said that we had to go home, and just as we were going to walk out the door, the girl came in with the dress. We paid and walked home! If the stores in Canada did things like that, there would be no stores! But this is Africa and they do things at a more flexible pace then we do in North America. That night we went to a modern worship service, then headed for bed. Today we got up and went to breakfast at 7am then headed to the community meeting at 7:45. For the rest of the day we worked on school, music, and watched "the apple dumpling gang". Nothing to exciting happened today, but I may as well tell you that or you might have thought that we were all deathly ill or something.......haha just kidding. Well we have less than a week left on the ship, and then we are going to head to Paris for a couple days then have a full day of flying home!
Carly
p.s. I never knew I could write so much in my life!
p.p.s. these pictures are just some from our walks to the market.