"We Shall Worship With Thanksgiving...."

What a wonderful day today. We went to church at a church about an hour from the ship. The first picture is of us in our Sunday go-to-meetings heading out. It was quite a journey and we will show the picture of the trip on a later blog. The church we attended was an Assemblies of God (our Pentecostal friends are now saying hallelujah...but I'm still a Bapticostal).

A little history about the church. The gentleman who is one of our agricultural instructors, a member of the crew and is from the Congo, helped plant this church in 2005. And it has been growing since, albeit not a huge church it is progressing. The picture of the block building is the church. It is a work in progress. But it is still used all the time. They have built the church on the go. Each Sunday when they take an offering for the building, they take the proceeds and buy what they can afford that week. When they were laying the floor, they could maybe buy a bag of cement a week. They would get it, mix it, and lay part of the floor, the same the next week. They did the same with the block and mortar. They are now working on the windows. All the while it is their worship center. Deb and I have decided that we will take a little of what we have and help them with one of the windows.

As you can see, the inside is very basic, again a work in progress. The congregation is all decked out. The one thing that I enjoy is the colors that people here love to wear. Their clothes are very vivid and multi-colored. That alone brings a vibrancy to the worship service. Today was a celebration of the men in the church.

We enjoyed celebrating the worship service through an interpreter. She is from Benin and the YWAM representative in the church. A wonderful lady.

The next picture is one of the men's choir. As you can tell they really get into the music. Just a side note. At the end of the service, the Elder who was the President of the Men's Group, got up and chastised the men for not being part of the men's group. The pastor then lamented that it was a shame that people were allowing the business of life to interfere with their service to the church. Deja vu. I guess it is the same around the world.

Another thing that has impressed us, this is the second church we have attended and it is the same, during the offering, everyone in the congregation, brings their offering up to the front while dancing in celebration. It redefines the term "cheerful giver".

The little girl in the next picture was just one we wanted to include. Cute. The one thing that impressed me was the number of children there were in the church. One of the men who went with us got a picture of all of us and the kids, I'll post it on another blog. The congregation sits divided, the men on one side and the women on the other, the kids are also divided in the same manner, and they also sit apart from the adults. A older teenager, I think, keeps them in line, again kids are kids, their interest in the sermon about the same as ours. All the women wear hats.

The next picture is of a lady saying good bye. Alisia wanted her picture because she liked the dress. But it shows the joy they had in having us as guests. After the service, they took all of us from the ship (about 10 of us) into the back room and served us sodas, juice and cookies. You could tell they really enjoyed having us visit. We are definitely going back next Sunday. Oh - the service lasted 2 1/2 hours. Joshua let me know he will never complain about the length of one of my sermons again. By the way - the sermon was about Jonah and our need to be obedient to God's will.

It is wonderful witnessing the movement of the Spirit in the World. We as Christians have a tendency to live in our own little church. The "Church" is so much bigger that any person or any church no matter what size. We tend to forget that we are here to serve God, not the other way around. To Him be the glory.