Sunday, November 2, 2008
This morning Pastor Gondwe came to the youth hostel and met us at about 8:00 am for the trip to Mkinga. This congregation was in a very small and poor congregation about 30 km north of Tanga. The roads were not in very good shape, so it took us about one hour to get there. The village had a population of about 400 people, a long way off the beaten path. The village was made entirely of mud waddle houses with thatched roofs. They were very close together, and the roads were very narrow and not made for automobiles. As Charles was driving through the “streets” there were several time I thought he was going to hit a pole or the corner of a house and bring the whole thing down! It was that close!
The service was supposed to start at 9:30 am, but there were very few adults there, so we waited an extra 30 minutes. During this time Bruce and I visited with some of the church leaders and played with the kids. We were told that there were going to be 12 baptisms in church that morning, although that seemed like a lot for a small village like this one. There was also a Pentecostal church in the village. While we were waiting we could hear someone from that church singing into a amplification system. It was a little distracting and quite a bit annoying, and I hoped that their service would be over by the time we were ready to begin!
We finally started the service at 10:00. They have a very liturgical service, with Pastor Gondwe actually singing his part of the liturgy, and the congregation singing the response. The service is actually very similar to ours in the order that it follows, with the only difference being that they do it in Swahili! We had planned ahead of time that I would be the preacher, and Bruce would give an overview of baptism before the baptisms. I preached on Rom. 1:16-17 with a Reformation theme, and reminding the members that the power to salvation is God’s and not ours. After another hymn Bruce gave an explanation of Baptism, and then we had the baptisms. Instead of having 12 there was only one child that was brought to be baptized, the others didn’t show up or were running behind. I was asked to conduct the baptism, and actually said the Baptism formula in Swahili, so they would know what was being said. In a way I was disappointed that there was only one baptism, but at the same time I was glad that this family had brought this young child to receive this precious gift from God!
After the two hour service we were invited to eat a quick lunch and then we had to get on the road, in order to make it back to Moshi before dark. It was another hour back to Tanga where we dropped off Gondwe, then another four hours back to Moshi. We made good time and arrived back at the hotel by supper time. Russ was there waiting for us and we had a lot to tell him (and he us). It was a great feeling to know that we were not going to be getting back on the road again! We will be stationed here at Moshi for over a week now working primarily with the seminary at Himo. What a relief after all this hard traveling!
In His service,
Nathanael
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