Megaphones and Manual Labour

Hey, this is Jacob! I have an update for the last 3 days. Enjoy! *sorry we are still having trouble posting pictures*

On Sunday we were at our first church service in the town Kasangulu, about an hour outside of Kinshasa, at the church we were spending time evangelizing with as Amanda described in the last post.

As expected, the worship service was quite different from what we are used to in North America and it was an amazing experience. Some hilights:

- there was lots of time in prayer, which often begun with the pastor telling us what to pray for, and then everyone praying outloud at once,

- for the most part everyone sings without any instrumental accompaniment, including a couple of songs sung completely solo

- the pastor occasionally used a megaphone which was loud and kind of hilarious

- from our perspective, everything was completely unorganized; we got more warning than we expected, but once in a while someone would just say out of the blue something like (in Lingala) "okay now our guests will bring sing a song of worship"

- we didn't understand most of the service as it was spoken in Lingala, and sometimes french.

- however, Eric, the assistant of our host pastor, continued to be a blessing as an excellent translator for both Lingala and French throughout the day. He also tells really good stories/jokes.

- there were very few adults (maybe about a dozen) and many more children

- one of the pastors read the letter of greetings from Glencairn MB which he translated into Lingala for the congregation

- another pastor conducted the congregation in a special animated gesture to illustrate them sending their love and greetings to Glencairn and our supporters in Canada. We'll be sure to relay that gesture upon our return.

Despite the church being relatively small, we could tell that they still had a strong heart for worship and also had a desire to build into the community. They currently have a vision to build a church, school, and clinic in the town.

Yesterday and today we were in a small village visiting a church and helping with an erosion prevention project they have started. The work we did involved filling sandbags with dirt and placing them where they told us. Most of us were quite excited about doing some manual labour, though on Monday we were all either tired or sick. The digestive systems of myself, Josh, and Amanda had problems accepting some of the food from the day previous. This village had a lot more kids and they were more aggressive in their excitement to see us than anywhere else we had been. The overwhelming presence of loud children coupled with being tired and doing hard work meant we didn't have a great day.

Thanks to some responsible leadership, we were given extra time to rest up and I think it's safe to say that today we were much healthier and in better shape to handle the hard work and excited people. We worked pretty hard and had more energy to converse with the kids and the adults of the village. It is sometimes difficult to build meaningful relationships with people here because there are often cultural differences, language barriers (sometimes double-translation is needed), and sometimes we feel like people have ulterior motives in that they are hoping to get money or something from us. For example, a couple of people kept telling me that I had to give them my shoes. They also offered me drugs.

All in all, we are doing well. Thank you for your continued support and prayers.

No I didn’t take the drugs.

Though I am still taking the malaria meds.