Monday, August 5, 2013

What's in a name?

The church service we went to this morning was amazing! We left for church around 10 and arrived to meet the pastor, John. He showed us around the church ground and shared a bit about its history for the first 30 minutes or so. They run a school on the grounds as well for some of the children from the slums of Kawangari. This church and school were literally buried deep within the slums which allows it to be a great ministry to the area! I hope to share more about it later. For now, I just want to share about the service. It started around 11 and he allowed us to leave at 1:30 BEFORE the service was over. He'd just given someone else the floor to talk for 20 minutes! Aside from the long list of announcements we sat through, the service was phenomenal! The song leaders were wonderful and I felt immediately ushered into worship! I couldn't understand what they were singing in the first song because it was in Swahili, but I could sure feel the presence of God settling in among us! I literally had goosebumps up and down my arms and legs! They sang with such passion and wholehearted praise that I was drawn into the presence of my amazing Savior! We sang a few English songs to and the passion was still there. I felt like the whole church was possibly radiating pure joy nonstop! It was a beautiful thing to be a part of! There even was some dancing down low, dancing back up, dancin around, and dancing in general. I felt completely free to praise God any way I wanted and I did! The kids all sang us a song or two also before they were released to their classes and were prayed over. Everyone there just seemed to just have joy bursting from them! And even the message was amazing! She preached on Jacob's name meaning deception/cheat and how he lived that meaning out in various life circumstances. Then he wrestles with God, finally claims who he really is, and God gives him a new name of Israel. We all have crap in our lives, scars, sorrows, betrayals, and so much more. God has given us a new name. We no longer need to wallow in how it was. We can live up to the new name in Christ we have been given! God is good. All the time. All the time. God is good because it's His nature. Beautiful service! Worship songs, dancing to songs, communion, choir singing us a song, and a great sermon!

After church, we headed out to lunch. It was a good lunch that we enjoyed outside in the cold! The had to roll out a heater to stand between our table to warm us! It's been a cold, misty kind of day with about a 60° temperature.

After settling up there we headed to a craft store. I found some cutesy little items I liked, but things are pricey here so I don't know that I'll have much to offer in gifts as much as I usually do.

After that, we headed back for team meeting, making of lunches for next few days, and bed. I'm exhausted. Just really wanted to share about the joy I experienced in today's service. Very rarely do I feel that free to be joy-filled and praising him with such exuberance (and dancing!)

Tomorrow we go back to the same church/school and we assist in painting the classrooms until lunch. After lunch, we do our last VBS with the kids from the slums. They seem to be eager and joyful children so I can't wait love on them with what he have planned for them! After that will probably be a few more shopping stops. Either tomorrow or Tuesday we get to go to a giraffe park! We can feed them right out of our hand! Hopefully someone will take my picture with a giraffe!

Sorry, took most pictures on my camera so only have a few to offer today.

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