Sunday

We emerged from our mosquito nets at an unearthly hour to collect our jerry cans of hot water and have a wash in order to be ready in time for the English service at Kigali Anglican Cathedral.  It was lovely to find breakfast had been set for us on the brown lawn outside our rooms overlooking the city below, because our usual dining room had been overrun with the chaos of yesterday’s wedding.

We arrived at the Cathedral, at five minutes to 8am, just in time, we thought.  The place was entirely deserted and then the American priest, Brandon appeared from a back room to inform us we were actually 50 minutes early, none of us had checked the time!  As he greeted us, we apologised for being ridiculously early, to which he retorted, that this was a pleasant change as most of his congregation arrived, ‘ridiculously late!’  He apologised that the singing might be pretty poor as he had just received a message saying that his music assistant was detained elsewhere.  Little did he know that within the hour a visiting choir from Kenya and another from Uganda were going to join us unannounced for worship!  This sudden influx of visitors somewhat took the clergy unawares, when administering communion too!  Looking at the limited amount of consecrated bread and wine brought the feeding of the 5000 to mind!

Needless to say, the singing was fabulous!  The visiting choirs were in the city for a festival of East African choirs at the local stadium, and had decided to pop in to worship en route to the venue. 

Soon after the worship began, Emily the American pastor’s wife arrived with her 2 young blonde children.  She carried baby in a Western style baby pouch, but our eyes were drawn to 2 year old Elsa, who has spent most of her life in Rwanda, and in spite of her shock of blonde hair, clearly feels at one with the natives.  She entered the cathedral carrying her little plastic doll, strapped to her back in a muslin cloth!

After the service we all piled into an adjacent room for milky Rwandan tea with an aroma of lemon grass.  Brandon had brought along 50 samosas to share, but once more commented that he had somewhat underestimated the size of the early morning congregation.  Other church members had baked chocolate cookies and tea flavoured shortbread, so we enjoyed a veritable feast before filing back into the church for the Kinyarwanda service. 

We were ushered to seats on the front row of the Ugandan choir, so it was good to have a brief chat with them as of course they had to communicate in English as they were not speakers of Kinyarwanda.  The minister travelling with them, got up to share a few words of scripture in English, translated into Kinyarwanda for the majority of the congregation.  He began by turning to us and shared a very emotive few words thanking us, as representatives of Britain, for bringing the gospel to his country in the 1800s.  He talked of how many of the missionaries had perished from malaria in their endeavours to bring Christianity to Uganda, and that the church in Uganda, remains indebted to the British.  We found tears welling up in our eyes as he spoke.

After his words, the choir accompanying him were invited to sing a couple of songs.  Clothed in long robes of Santa-red with white collars, they formed a tuneful and colourful spectacle as they swayed in time to their gospel sounds.

It was extremely hot in the church so Eleanor went out for some air as she felt a bit faint.  Heather kindly asked after her, but Alan assured her that his wife was fine.  Unbeknown to any of us, Eleanor had sat down in one of the offices and been shut in as the door handles were missing on the inside.  When she realised she couldn’t escape, she went out of the other side of the office to a corridor only to have the door shut behind her once more and find again that another door handle was missing!  She was then well and truly stuck for the whole duration of a lonnnnnng Rwandan church service!

A choir of children sang to us before Heather was invited to the front of church to pray with them. Barely visible amongst the crowd of children, she prayed for them before they departed to receive their Sunday school teaching. Andy preached, about what it means to live with Christ as Lord,  with Pastor Samuel by his side as translator.  Throughout his preaching, whenever a verse of scripture needed reading aloud, a member of the congregation would always spontaneously stand to read, such an encouragement, when we consider how difficult it can be to cajole a member of the congregation to read a lesson in English churches, with a week’s notice, let alone an immediate request.  It’s so refreshing to see African worshippers, free of our British inhibitions!

Having discovered and freed Eleanor from her stifling captivity after the service, we resuscitated her with a second-hand bottle of water and a cola, snaffled from the church office! Heather was also looking a little peaky and had been nipping in and out of the service with alarming frequency, clutching her tummy and sporting a pained expression on her face!  Clearly the punishing African lifestyle was beginning to take its toll on the team!

After a mini kip back at the hostel however, both ladies were revived and ready to head out again to continue negotiations with the widows, who had brought their large collection of home made baskets into a local church for us to purchase.  After some discussions, tapping on the calculator and the scribbling of many lists, the ladies seemed to be happy and there were hugs all round as we staggered to the Land Cruiser laden with a variety of their attractive Rwandan baskets to take back to the UK.

Give thanks for the services; for the baskets bought for Ubushuti; for general safety and wellbeing of the team.
Please pray for final meetings and tying up loose ends; for visit to Bumbogo parish tomorrow (Monday).