January 18, 2008 – 8:06pm (GMT +1) – Efa Village
Well today I experienced my first African worship service. It was a good Lutheran liturgy. We followed through page 5 in the Lutheran Hymnal. We sang hymns from the Lutheran Hymnal. We confessed our sins. We listened to the scriptures readings and the creeds, we had a sermon, all normal, then the African’s got sick of the German liturgy and made noise enough to make up for months of quiet meditation. The church wasn’t even a fourth of the way full, there were maybe 50 people there, but they made more noise than Messiah Eau Claire and Immanuel Mankato put together. Good noises, praises to the Lord, singing, clapping, and drums. They danced their way up to the collection plate, gave their offering, sat down, prayed, then they did it all again. I’m not kidding. I don’t know why, but they had a second collection of the offering. Everyone danced their way up again. This service was the graduation service. So after the offering they presented the graduates with their diplomas, etc, then the graduates each in turn addressed the congregation. After each one addressed the congregation, the congregation lined up for their offering dance again, this time to present gifts to the graduates. They set out to praise the Lord and praise the Lord they did. It was fun, even though I couldn’t understand what they were singing, it was all in Efic at that point.
Tuesday night I was informed I was doing the sermon for the graduation service. So I had my first shot at giving a sermon while someone is translating. Let’s just say, I’ll have to work on that. It is very disconcerting and hard to keep your line of thought when you have to stop after each sentence and wait. Well I’ll learn. When I was about to read the sermon text Pastor Edwym who was translating forme, asked the reference, and then just read it in Effic. My sermon text was very short, Phil 4:10, but he went on for a while. I was afraid I had given him the wrong refernce, it turned out I had.
Tomorrow we take off; we leave for Lagos and from there to Ghana. Hopefully I will have a chance to email everyone and post this on the web in Lagos.
– Matt