Sunday, February 26, 2012

Our Second Sunday in Iringa (At Cathedral)


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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