Church in Chotororo

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Since I have been visiting Africa, I have never seen communion celebrated. Part of the reason for this is that I am not here for that many Sundays, and may miss their communion service. Another reason is that they don’t celebrate it as often as we do in the US because wine is very expensive here. On this trip Russ brought some communion wafers along from the states and he purchased some wine in Kisii before we left. Today we were invited to attend church in Chotororo were Pastor Fred serves. We had to leave the hotel this morning at about 8:00am and we hoped to be at Chotororo at 10:00am. But we had some very rough roads, and our driver almost ran out of gas. I thought we were in big trouble, because there were no filling stations for miles of where we were. Thankfully there was a little shop in the middle of nowhere that had petrol for sale. They stored it in a big 5 gallon container, but couldn’t get the funnel into the tank. Improvising, they used a one liter coke bottle to fill our tank with 10 litres of fuel! Only in Africa!

Petrol in a Coke bottle filler!

Due to the delays, we were an hour late for church. Still, the congregation was there waiting patiently for us. How many in the US would do that? The service began after our arrival and we sang along with a somewhat familiar Lutheran liturgy (in a different language). Hymns, readings, and I was asked to give the sermon. After the sermon and offering communion was celebrated. It was a wonderful chance to fellowship with this group of like-minded believers and join in celebrating our Savior’s death and resurrection for us in this way! The service lasted two hours, and following the service we journeyed down the hill to have some home-made “donuts” and soda. The women and children were especially fascinated by Russ’s camera and ability to print pictures on site. Everyone wanted to have a picture taken.

The members of Chotororo

From Chotororo it was two hour trip back home (we had enough gas this time). We were joined on our trip by Crispin, our friendly waiter at the Zonic, and coordinator for the vehicle we used this morning. I had given him some Spokesmans and a catechism and he became interested in our church and its teachings. So we invited him to join us for church this morning. It was quite a ride for him to join us for church, but he said that he was glad that he had come. We were glad too.

The rough roads to Chortororo

We made it back to Kisii around 4:30, paid our taxi driver and then went up to our hotel room in the Zonic to prepare for tomorrow. We have our Etago leaders’ conference tomorrow and I need to get some presentations readied. Our time here is nearing an end, but there is still much to do.

In His service,

Nathanael Mayhew

“Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name!” (Psalm 103:1 ).