Today, being Sunday, we took the day off! No long drives, no early mornings, just a leisurely
drive to church. We decided to try going
to one of the churches in town today – so we picked up Itiweni and off we went
to Cathedral. The service at Cathedral
was a bit like those we’ve attended at the rural churches; that is, it lasted 2
hours with many choirs and multiple offerings.
The one thing missing though was the energy and dancing. The more reserved nature of the service
reminded us more of home; the one exception being the sermon which took 45 minutes
and was full of energy. We could
understand the energy, but unfortunately, not the words.
After church we went
outside for an auction of items donated during the offerings. While standing there we started to meet
people we knew from town. There was
Beatrice (Denis Ngede’s wife), Brown (who is traveling with us), Harry (a Tumaini
businessman we’ve met during past visits), Obadiah (from Tumaini’s choir), and
many others. We wound up leaving the
service with a variety of “we need to have dinner” and an invitation to a wedding
early next month.
After leaving church we went to get gas. The tank was half full so it only took $65 to
fill it up. That’s right – a full tank
of gas here costs about $140. As close
as I can estimate the current price is about $6.50/gallon. It costs about $35-40 every day for fuel for
our visits. At this rate we will be
spending about $1,000 on gas to make our visits! No wonder people don’t have cars and visitors
to the villages are not that frequent.
Oh well – a quiet afternoon catching up on our writing and
then off at 7 tomorrow morning to Nyanzwa.
Outside the church with Itiweni and her daughter Mercy.
The choir sang and the auction was held in the courtyard after the service.
We kept meeting people we knew. Shown here are Harry (on the left) and Obadiah (on the right).
We got gas and did some shopping - not much chance to visit the market during the week!
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