CHURCH, BOARDING SCHOOL and the PLAY!

SUNDAY WAS A HUGE AND REWARDING DAY! 

We visited William Coffe's Grampa's Church where he is the pastor. 

The church was up a steep hill after going through a village on some

typically bad mud-rutted roads.  But once we arrived it was wonderful. 

Grampa--the Pastor met us at the door and escorted us ahead of the whole church to

some special seats where the pastors and teachers were sitting.  The service started 

at 8:00am and all these folks were there. 

Our car was the only one... everyone else had walked.

They began building this church in 2008 and it isn't quite done.  They are in the building

so i guess they don't need permits....just one inspector! 

May 7th---O. Chambers says..."All that we build will be inspected by God...

Profoundly speaking, we can never work for God.  Jesus takes us over for His enterprises!

His building schemes entirely and no soul has any right to claim where he shall be put!"

The sermon was on the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
They had arranged for an interpreter
so he was with Bruce and William filled me in as grampa preached!
  William said that his grampa likes to use lots of scripture verses and that he did!
He had a very strong preacher voice and in addition to the big hand mic...turned as high as could be....  well, Tim...the truth is
you couldn't have even come close to his volume!   It was great!
And his sermon was filled with the Spirit! (like Doug and Tim's)

William Coffe, me, Grampa, Bruce and Gramma
outside after the service. They have raised William
since his parents are no longer alive. They have done a terrific job.

                   

The church has 6 choirs.. Amy can you imagine?  There are 3 for each service and since the service was from 8-10:30 you can imagine that there was a lot of music!

The Spirit was alive and well!  

                                                                           This guy reminded me of Andy Collins.  

                                                                             He just had his same energy!  

And then there was this little boy! 

 As the choir was singing.... he checked out the sound board 

and then made his way behind the choir to the 

other side of the church, near us. 

 Where he proceeded  to collect all the cell phones
of all the choir members!!   LOL!!!

 He then decided he needed a place to put them all so he
grabbed a purse and slung it over his shoulder.
About this time the choir started to return and they
all rescued their property.... grinning the whole time!
It was too cute.

Then the pastor asked all those baptized last week to come
down front to proclaim to all that they had chosen to follow the
Lord Jesus!  After this the 3rd choir sang a special song to them
about now belonging to the King.

 These two never lost track of us... during and after the service and
they followed us down the road a long way as we were leaving.

 Going down and around to tour the whole building.

THIS is the Sunday School Room where the children meet on Sunday

 and the Adults meet during the week. Kids, we have it pretty great in Sunday School... This room had no chairs, a brick floor and a blackboard!  But people are learning about Jesus and who he is right here in this room.

 One of the choirs preparing before the 2nd service.

                   

 And another choir in another spot.  Our house is down and
across the valley and up the hill.

 

Driving back through the village.

              Isn't this the most restful, peaceful picture? 

        Taken on the way home from church.

Nothing stops on Sunday here.. 

There are always needs to be met 

and strong men to meet them!

And all of that happened BEFORE 10:30!!!

After church we headed off to St. Bernadette's Boarding school 

about 1/2 hr. away where Synthia is in school now.

This is Synthia attacking me to say hello as i'm trying to take
a picture of her and her brother, Serge.  She was so happy
we all came to see her.
The kids are allowed one visit a month for a short time in the
afternoon!

 William found a friend from Kagugu (where we live)
and Igor and Serge with Synthia!

 This is Diana, Synthia's Mom and her brother again.
She, too... lost her Dad 3 years ago so her mom is her sole provider.

And this is us with her, too!

William borrowed my camera and took the next couple shots.
14 year olds!

 Igor in Serge's shadow. The way it is!

Once Bruce showed the boys the GPS they were all over him! 

A lot of these girls were from Kagugu and when i showed them
pictures of their old school on my camera they went crazy talking about
memories and teachers that they had had "last year"!  

Igor, Bruce and William studying just exactly where we were located.

 This was the most astonishing thing about the boarding school!

THIS WAS THE PARENT MEETING!

Can you even imagine if we had this many parents at a PTA meeting?
There are about 1000 kids --both male and female on location and i
think at least 1 parent was represented for each of them.
We had been outside and a teacher came and said "are you here for the meeting?"
We replied sort of.. so he ushered us into the meeting and made people move
over so we could sit down..about 5 rows from the front!!!   Bruce was so pleased.
The meeting was at least 3 hours long.  We only got here for the last 45 min..but we still ended up leaving before it was over.


It was great to see Synthia and all the kids here miss her very much.  She is sort of the  girl who holds all the village kids together!  William is doing that now!

We got home at 4pm.... in time for a nap and to get ready to go see the local church school K-12 perform "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe!"
B. couldn't go so i took the kids from the village.

None of them had ever seen a play, a drama or anything on stage.
THEIR EYES WERE ALIVE watching all the action even though most of
them don't speak a word of English!  It was fun and a great and exhausting day.



When we came out of the church where the play was we saw this.. Well, the moon was huge and what we saw was way better than this picture.  There's something on the news about the moon being bigger visually right now.  Right?  
It certainly seemed to be the case! 

It was an illuminating conclusion to a wonderful day!

love,
margie