Habari Za Asubuhi (How are you this morning?)

Nsuri sana (very good!)

I have picking up some Swahili since being here, especially the greetings.

We arrived at church this morning on time at 9 AM but were surprised to see people wandering in even up to about 40 minutes into the service and this appeared to be normal.  Although the service was entirely in Swahili, it wasn’t hard to follow along with Lutheran order of worship.  The woman next to me had a hymnal with the liturgy and songs and helped me to follow along.  The pronunciation is not that difficult but the main problem was trying to speak as quickly as they do.  I found that I could follow along with the hymns pretty well because they sang the words much more slowly than if they were speaking the same words.  The choir was terrific and the harmonies were beautiful.  The people sway and dance as they sing and I found myself moving right along with them.  The people seemed to appreciate my dancing and they even complemented me on it! An electric keyboard and an electric guitar accompanied the singing during the service. I thought that was very interesting.  There were no drums but the people clapped along with the worship songs. I took a picture of the men with their instruments and I will post that in the future.

After the service, we went into the courtyard and they auctioned off the gifts of vegetables that people had brought for offering.  One of the doctors bought a six-foot long piece of sugar cane for our group!

I have taken a lot of photos but you will probably have to wait until I can access the Internet in Uganda (hopefully!) to see them.

(Posted by my daughter)