Taking You to Church--Again. Mundri-style.

Bishop swearing in the new lay-readers.
Esther is second from left.

Superbowl Sunday is a thing, I’m pretty sure. Because one time while I was in college, Joanna and I went to the store on Sunday after church and it was way crowded with people buying stuff and talking about football. Anyway, I’m also sort of sure that Superbowl Sunday happened on the same day that I spent 5 hours in church in Mundri. For real. I left my house at 9:30am and didn’t get back home until after 4:00pm, having eaten nothing but Holy Communion all day.  But thank YOU all for posting all about your favorite Superbowl party snacks all over the internet. Even though, no, I was not looking at Facebook on my phone for most of the service. I did occasionally sneak a peak to check the time. I was really curious.  At least I got to Communion before they ran out of bread—but don’t worry: the loaves multiplied. Vaida has one of those extra-large grandma purses. You know, the kind that is usually filled with peppermints and other hard candy that no one actually wants to eat unless you are in church? But they don’t have peppermints here, and probably they would never make it to the bottom recesses of the Grandma purse here, because kids don’t get much candy here and they will eat any of it as soon as it gets in their little hands. Anyway, Vaida had a package of “glucose biscuits” in her purse for her son or grandson or whoever. When she noticed the bread running low, she grabbed it and handed it up to be the Body of Christ, broken for our sins. And I think it was just as good as Coke and pound cake that I had for the Lord’s Supper as a kid one time in Indonesia (Best church day ever).

If you are doing math on the times I included in that first paragraph, my first question to you is “Why do you really care that much?” But my second question to you is not a question, it’s just the answer to your question about how I got 5 hours out of 9:30-4:00. The answer is that I spent 5 hours of that 6.5 hour time period in church. The other 1.5 hours were spent walking to/from church and a quick trip to the market to pick up some food. I went home and called the khawajas to tell them that I couldn’t make it to khawaja church because 5 hours was all the organized church time that I had in me for the day. They understood.

The gang walking home from church

But truthfully, I really like church in Mundri. Yes, I prefer the “short” 2-3 hour services at my church because I just really like our music and the enthusiasm of our congregation for participation in worship. I love that that we have to wait for the dust to settle before we can see the preacher standing a few meters in front of us on our “stage” because the dancing kicked up our dirt floor into a cloud (asthmatics coming to visit our church, please bring an extra inhaler or two and a face mask). Also, our children’s choir is top notch. They have moves, Guys. For real.  They dance in to the front of the church. Then one lucky star kid yells to the congregation that they will be singing one song in Arabic and please listen nicely. Then they sing and dance the song, and then they dance their way out again.  

I also like Sunday Testimonies, an open invitation to the audience to share with everyone something important from their week, though when I've given testimonies, they are usually just intra-Church greetings. Other people’s testimonies are more exciting. One time a guy called out one of the pastors for drinking too much, while the khawaja-raised-in-Asia writhed in an agony of embarrassing public confrontation, but the pastor just calmly stood up and asked for prayer to help out with that. Another time a lady shared how she had been bathing when a snake (very poisonous one) slithered across her foot and she prayed that it would go away without killing her, and it did! Often, though, it’s people coming up and sharing their dreams and what they think God was telling them through that. The other night I had a dream that I was walking with Marian and she had one of the twins attached to her and was walking right into on-coming traffic, and I said, “Hey-why don’t you just wait for that bus to go BEFORE you cross the street?” But she was in a hurry to get to her new house (or wherever we were going) and also she was trying to lose me on the way because she didn’t want me to go with her. And then I said, “Fine. I don’t  care about your new house anyway. But you really should be more careful crossing streets.” Or something like that because when I woke up wondering why I was mad at Marian for some reason, the edges of the dream got fuzzy and then I just made up the rest of that, but I definitely remember her stepping in front of that bus. Seriously, Marian—look both way before crossing the street. But that isn’t really the kind of testimony that people share on Sundays, it’s just that it popped in my mind when we were talking about dreams and I thought I should make sure that Marian is not endangering her life and the life of one of her children (the others were probably home safe with Josh, but you never know what Josh was doing—maybe walking into on-coming traffic is just a Frizzell thing). Because you never know when a shiny red double-decker is coming down the street right at you, and those guys won't stop for pedestrians.

Being a foreigner in church is usually interesting. I’m not the only foreigner in my church anymore. There is a nice man from Uganda who also attends, though he doesn’t seem to stand out as much as me for some reason. He is working on the Amadi road, but he drives in for services. His name is Innocent, and I really like him. Sometimes they have English translations for him. Sometimes they just make sure he sits next to someone who can tell him what is going on. Before he started coming, they would always ask at the beginning of the service, “Is there anyone here who does not understand Arabic?” The first few times I attended, several people would turn around and look pointedly at me, and then the others around them who remembered my first attendance and self-introduction in Arabic, would wave them off saying, “No, no, she’s fine.” But even though people know me there now, and my pastor sees me as an official member of the church, who can be called upon to participate in church fund-raising games and answer questions about hand pump applications, there are always a few newbies who stare. I try not to take photos in church (though I’ve taken a few videos of the children’s choir, which I will try to post*), so here is a picture of me showing you the face of a young boy sitting in the row in front of me in church last week. Even though I didn’t get his photo, this is an exact replication of his expression. Trust me, I am a professional.

So I tried to be reassuring and I gave him this face:

He responded to me with this face:

And then I turned the other way to look out the window at the kids climbing trees and thought about how fun it would be to be out there too. But at least church was shady and I had my little batik fan—thanks, Mom. The fan keeps me from missing you too much because it makes me feel like I am you and then how can I miss you if you are right there sitting in my chair, fanning yourself and waving at all the small children?

Finally, I’m including a self-portrait of myself after the 5 hour church service. Just so you know—taking a selfie in church is rarely acceptable behavior, and butt selfies are never appropriate no matter how good you think you look in yoga pants. So that’s why I drew a picture of me and my post-sitting-on-a-log-bench-for-5-hours body. The skirt fabric stuck to my rear because—artistic license is a thing that trumps reality, and basically that is the shape that my butt took for the rest of the day.  Once again—you can totally tell that my dad is a professionally trained artist who studied under the masters in Florence, Italy.

Yes, I wrote this on the back of my notes
from a mostly-useless OCHA meeting because
I was running out of paper and it is important to conserve trees.
This portrait is Saving the Earth.
And somehow this drawing turned out Jules Feiffer-esque, all chinless and pointy-nosed,
so it looks like those multiple readings of the Phantom Tollbooth paid off after all.

*I tried. I failed. Maybe I can get them to go on Facebook somehow.