Surprise Sunday

Sunday, January 27, 2019

This Sunday began just as all other have so far: we got up, ate breakfast, got dressed and climbed into Ray’s taxi at 10:00 for our ride to church. Upon arriving at ACC and discovering that today was “family Sunday,” I gave an inward groan. Such services in the past have featured torturous sets of bad songs, poorly sung by the younger Sunday School kids, and then maybe a puppet show instead of a sermon. It was a total relief to discover that there was only one song by the children and while the lyrics were semi-bunk theologically, the kids did a pretty good job of singing it. It was even more interesting for me to notice that among the 26 children, only 4 where caucasian. This is a massive ratio change since last year! ACC has always had a large Sunday School program, but before this year I would have judged the at least a third of the children to be wazungu.

Sunday's flower arrangement

Then, better yet, there was no puppet show or cutsie drama for small children. Instead a real person, Rex Chapote, gave a real sermon, based on Luke 4: 14-22 ,which describes Jesus’ return to the synagogue in his home town, Nazareth. I had never seen him before and thought he must be a pastor visiting from another church. However, he turned out to be a recent member of ACC from Malawi, and now he is the director of Farm Radio here in Arusha. I don’t know if he has ever been a minister, but he gave the most lucid and interesting sermon I’ve heard at ACC so far this year.

Last Sunday, I had complained about the lousy singing at ACC, but the music today was excellent. Accomplished musicians—2 Americans and 2 Tanzanian—played guitars and piano and led the singing beautifully. Even more amazing and heartening to me was that one of the Americans played a traditional drum during some of the songs, one of which was in Swahili. The congregational singing for the Swahili song was excellent! Maybe some older wazungu will feel a bit out of joint, but I loved these slight changes and hope more come.

During the usual after service coffee/chai time, I talked with my usual homies and was very happy to find out that our women’s group would be meeting this coming Thursday. This will be the very first time we have met this year, and although I know the size of the group is diminished, I am excited about being with the members who are still here in Arusha. However, I am less excited that we will be meeting in ACC’s chapel instead of a member’s home as we always did before. I am extremely grateful for the opportunities I have had to be a guest in so many homes in the past years. Maybe we can return to that custom of hospitality before I leave again in March.

No one else seemed interested in going out to lunch, so we found a taxi and went to Taj, an Indian restaurant on Njiro road, next door to the Pepsi plant. It has wonderful Indian food at reasonable prices, $6.50 an entrée. Once again, John ordered something mutton. I took a chance and ordered something completely new to me, chicken keema kofta, which was delicious. John ordered more naan than we needed, but it’s such a treat to get good, fresh, authentic naan that we tend to gorge when we can.

Enjoying Sunday dinner at the Taj.

The rest of the day was our usual napping, reading, and waiting until 7:00 p.m. here so that we could call Peri at 8:00 a.m. in Spokane. The connection with our Smile gizmo was excellent, and peri was much more conversational than before. Her main topic was her watermelon swimsuit, which she wears when she goes swimming at the Y with her mama. She seemed a bit amused when we told her that here watermelon is called “tiki-tiki maji.” We also got her usual play doh demonstration, and the half hour passed all too quickly. We miss her very much.

Oh, by the way, I finished Ruth Ozeki’s novel My Year of Meats and must decide now what I will read next. I haven’t been able to download any new Kindle books here, something I’ve always been able to do in the past. What could be the problem?