Once Upon a Time Sarah Went to Her First Congolese Church Service…

Sunday morning we woke up and prepared to attend my first African church service at a church here called Bethlehem. Edison (our chauffer) arrived around 9AM to pick us up in the rickety land cruiser owned by the local church. We piled in the back and began driving down the pothole-covered roads of Gemena. Young children on the side of the road waved and screamed as they saw a truck full of white people pass by. The adults mostly stared. We picked up Sam's dad and the Free Church president, Bosopali, and we were on our way to church (losambo).

Now, I have heard about these church services from Sam and others who have been to Africa before. They are long services with lots of singing and dancing. So I fully expected to be in the service for about 3 hours, much like my experience attending Bread of Life when I lived in Tulsa. Luckily I had been somewhat prepared for a long service because the service lasted almost 5 hours on Sunday morning! Yes, that's right, 5 hours.

The service went something like this: men's choir sings a few songs, women's choir sings a few songs, girl's choir sings a few songs, pastor welcomes everyone, the congregation sings a few songs, we pray, we read scripture, we sing, someone speaks at the pulpit, we sing, we pray, the pastor introduces all the other pastors, the pastor introduces all the visitors and the visitors all stand up, the pastor introduces Sam's dad who speaks at the pulpit and introduces us and the Larsens, we sing, we read scripture, we pray, we sing, someone gives a sermon, many people in the congregation visibly fall asleep, we pray, we prepare to take the offering, entire congregation dances and sings to the front of the church to drop off their offering, the congregation sings and dances for an hour, we pray, the pastor announces the amount of the offering, we clap, we pray, men's choir sings another song, we leave. Whew! Keep in mind that the entire service is in Lingala and I only understand a handful of Lingala words at this point.

During the service the sky grew darker and darker and after the first 5 minutes of the offering it began to rain hard. Since no one could really go anywhere in the hard rain, they just decided to keep us in the church building singing and dancing until the rain stopped. Jim (Sam's dad) later referred to this as "offering jail" to which the Congolese people we had lunch with laughed about. It was quite enjoyable to watch all the celebration and I wanted to be able to dance like the Congolese women, but instead I just clapped and swayed. At one point an old woman came up to me, Aaron and Michelle and motioned for us to sit down while she was laughing. Apparently she felt sorry for us since we had been standing so long, awkwardly swaying.

We arrived at the church service at 9:30AM and walked out at 2:20PM feeling very ready to eat lunch.

The End