This, after a celebration the night before for Sean and Mattias who would be celebrating birthdays while we were in the bush.
Although it's hard to believe anything is better than donuts with chocolate on top, going to ch_rch in Baikoro was awesome. The p=stor there was one of Dadje's disciples.
We were treated as honored guests and seated up in the front facing everyone. We sat on nice chairs with backs and arm rests while the rest of the congregation sat on simple benches or the floor. It was a small brick building with a thatched roof. The message was about sacrificing for others and we were the example of how much we had sacrificed to be there. This was the first of many, many times I felt totally humbled and unworthy.
These pictures are taken as we sat in front of the ch_rch. I tried not to be obvious about taking the pictures so the quality isn't the best. But you get the feel for how it looked inside.
At the end of the service we all filed out the back "door," formed and circle and sang and danced some more. I honestly don't know how we all were packed into that small building. I'm not sure if you would consider this traditional or contemporary w*rship music.....
After we sang and danced some more, they fed us rice, chicken and sauce. It was all very good, but again very humbling to be served so much food when there were women and children standing around us who needed this food much more than we did. Every Ch*dian meal we were served felt like this, I felt more and more uncomfortable. It's hard to be "in the culture" and do the "right" thing culturally, when my heart was saying I need to feed the hungry. This continued to be one of the hardest things I had to do.
We were getting ready to leave for the "bush" the next day. I was beginning to get used to the paradoxical feelings and thoughts I was having... like being nervous and excited, apprehensive and calm, etc all at the same time. I had, however, realized that I felt hot all the time - there was no paradox to this.
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