St. Peter's Luanda

My second Sunday was spent at St. Peter's in Luanda, a small market town near Maseno. I was preaching at two morning prayer services. The early service was in English and attracted the young people who are working to improve their English skills. It lasted about an hour and was a pretty typical service for MP.

Following that we had a small breakfast with the parish lay leaders. Hard boiled eggs, ugali, fruit and chai. Then back to Church for the three hour kiswahili service. That's right THREE HOURS. The actual worhsip part of the service was about an hour and a half including my sermon. But within the service they conducted a lot of community business. For example a recently bereaved family was back in church for the first time and so ten people came forward to each express thanks for the support they had received and get prayed over. Later in the service each small group from the villages or from different ministries brought their offerings forward and had them counted.

My sermon was well received and people invited me back!

After the service lunch was served. Chicken, a green vegetable and ugali. Then back to the seminary and rest.

Each evening we do a debriefing of the events of the day and things that have happened. At the moment there are about a dozen people from the US here engaged inmedical or seminary work. We end in prayer each evening.

Ugali is a dish, by the way, made from flour corn or millett that is stirred into hot water and constantly served to make a huge dumpling that is scooped into balls and served like bread. The carbs in it are so intense they are what laid me low these last few days. Plus everything here is highly sugared.