Sunday in Iringa

What a fantastic day! Our translator invited us to worship at his church, and to have lunch at his house after. Today was a special children’s service so children had a large part of the church service. They sang, read announcements and the text for the day, said the prayers and many of them recited bible verses they had memorized. At the first service there had been a bible trivia contest, and Pastor Peter was asked to hand out the prizes to the three winners. He also handed out our Swahili-English bible verse bookmarks to all of the children at the service. A special surprise was that our translator’s son was being baptised and Pastor Peter was asked perform the baptism. We had a short visit with the pastors of the congregation after, and discovered that one had served in Bomalang’ombe in the late 80’s. We had a delicious meal at our translator’s house. After that it was off to the Hruma Center orphanage. Our driver had purchased 100 kilos of rice with some of the funds we raised ahead of time. When we got to the center, we found that one of the neighboring congregations had brought over 200 of their children for a visit to learn more about the work being done and to play with the children. They had also brought gifts of food and hygenie supplies, and had brought small packaged cookies for everyone to share. While the children were playing we got a tour of the facility and learned more about the work being done. After dinner we gathered at the Bega kwa Bega office for ice cream and a recap. We each drew a question out of a basket to help us ponder our trip. For example, ‘think of someone who you learned something from. Then it was back to pack for our trip to Bagamoyo and Dar es Salaam and then home.