African Church Service! (by: Emily)

I met a wonderful woman who works at Amani this weekend. It was really sweet getting to chat with her because we're almost the same age...I'm 19 and she's 20! Our birthdays are even a couple of days apart! It was neat getting to hear about her life and how different it is from mine. She has a beautiful voice! We were singing together into the night and she was teaching me some new songs -both Lugandan and English! She was such an encouragement to my heart! A few of us from Amani ended up going to her church yesterday, which was a very cool experience! It's definitely very different than my church back home. People were dancing and singing and no one was standing still! They were all SO friendly and we were welcomed and greeted by a lot of wonderful people!

One thing that is very different about Africa is the fact that they seem to have no concept of time. Church was supposed to start at 8:00am, but by the time it started it was closer to 8:30am. The next service started at 10:00am, so we expected that we would get out at least 10 minutes earlier so that the new people could come in. NOPE! The first 8:00am service went from 8:30am until around 10:45am! There were a lot of people waiting around the church outside because there were no seats as the first service was still going on! I thought it was kind of funny because all of the people waiting for the 10:00am service already heard a lot of the message from our 8:00am service! The church itself was different than a typical church back home. Most churches I've been to are in a building with at least 4 walls and a roof. This church had a tin roof with no walls. The floor was just dirt, and because there were no walls, I noticed a few chickens wandering around during the service! I couldn't help but smile as I was loving the JOY of all the people I met and their excitement to worship Jesus!

I can't believe I have less than a week left to take all of this in!!! I'm going to be really sad to leave, but I'm looking forward to seeing y'all when I'm home!

Much Love,
Em