I have to apologize that I have not posted a blog post in a while. The thunderstorms here have been causing some issues with power generation and the internet. The mail office block at Growing Nations. the conservation farming organization, was hit twice by lighting in February. I am currently sitting on a porch listening to the the Messiah while it is raining and there is a thunderstorm up the valley.
The church here does not practice Easter the same way I am used to. We had the normal church services from the liturgy all the way up until Good Friday. Well it could have been up to Palm Sunday as I did not go to the local church last Sunday. It is interesting to see how we practice church and the seasons of the church that I am so used to are not universal. And realizing that I wonder how much of the church activities we do are cultural and in turn wondering what church should look like.
The service yesterday was quite nice. It looked like rain so people were slow to arrive. I walked to church with my Nkhono, usually I walk by myself but I was afraid that I would be the only one there. The people who were the first to arrive were all from my village of Ha Seliba (pronounced Sediba), and were all from my Nkhono's extended family. We were joking that it was the Matli's church now. People started to show up and we started the service.
The service consisted of people reading passages from the Passion of the Christ. It would be intermixed with songs or verses of songs that related directly to those passages. We all sat close together and it had a nice community feeling. It was actually the first time that I had sat with somebody from my family at church, I usually sit with Abby and Kendelle instead.
This Sunday for Easter the church is going to travel up the valley for a church at a different church. The other church is still apart of the same denomination, but it is a church that is going through some struggles. Lightening hit the church back in February and a local witchdoctor said that the lightening had laid eggs there and will come back and strike often. This caused people at both the school and the church to avoid the area when there was a storm. Us going there will hopefully change some of the local people's opinion of the location.
