Church

My first church service in Nigeria was at Graceword Assembly in a village called Umahia just to the north in Abia State. Bro. McLean preached, and Eno (pronounced ay’-naw) drove. It was an ADVENTURE! Just what I had been looking forward to. Stephanie was having her own adventure (NOT) with Timothy not being able to handle more than thirty seconds of his first Nigerian church service.

My second church service was here in Enugu at the church connected with the Bible school here and I was asked to preach. This church, the Jesus For All Centre, is pastored by my good friend Darlynton (pronounced “Darlington”) Jakin. I say “good friend” because even though I have only known him a short while, and have talked to him only a small amount, I feel like he is kin. I am still awed and humbled by the fact that he took a ten hour bus ride to Abuja to pick up our luggage.

Impressions of my first two Nigerian Sunday church services? There is a lot of singing. I mean, a LOT. I mean, more than you can probably imagine. I think there was something on the order of close to an hour of singing in this second service. I can only understand something like half of what is sung. Many of the songs are similar if not nearly identical to songs we sing back home. Others… sound vaguely familiar, but I can’t make out the words or put my finger on the tune. I sang in the second service, just before I started preaching. My message was “More Like Jesus” and so I sang “Make Me More Like You.” I am always touched when the congregation starts singing with me!

Maybe I have a high tolerance for adapting to different kinds of church services due to my background, but church here does not feel a whole lot different from church back home. Except for the heat. And the increased amount of singing. And not being able to understand what is sung a goodly part of the time. Sweat dripping down your face because it’s 90 outside and 95 in the sanctuary. Okay, so I haven’t really experienced that yet. In Umahia the church almost felt air-conditioned due to the sweet breeze that drifted in the open windows and the placement of the building seemed to offset the blazing sun somehow. Church in Umahia was held in a grade school of sorts. There were diagrams of different structures of the body on a chalkboard that looked like it was part of the wall, in addition to English and Math lessons in different sections of the wall. Here in Enugu, the church has a generator that powers the six ceiling fans in the sanctuary which makes a world of difference.

Did I mention how they take offerings here? Everybody marches. Or dances.

They place the offering box in the middle of the sanctuary and they start singing another song. And then, one by one, or row by row, or however the local assembly does it, people will dance their way up to drop some naira in the box. The first service I did not dance my way to the offering box. The second service I did manage to at least make an effort to move my body in a way that seemed like it was stepping in time to the rhythm of the song. Stephanie would perhaps want me to mention something else about rhythm. She has always had no problem clapping in time back home. Here they clap differently. They will do a kind of syncopated rhythm, clapping once on the downbeat, then again three quarters of the way up to the second beat of the measure. Takes some getting used to.

You know what else takes getting used to? Being given a live chicken as part of the offering, and having it clucking in the backseat of your vehicle the whole ninety minute drive back home.

I’d wanted to get a picture of it while it was in the back of the truck, but Bro. McLean wanted to get it off of the carpet as soon as humanly possible when we pulled in to the driveway and I had to run upstairs to get the camera. I’m sorry I didn’t take another picture of it after it had been prepped for consumption or during any part of that experience. We were also given large bags of avocado, plantain, and oranges I think. The oranges here are green. Whaddya think of them apples? Apples, 60 naira a piece. That’s about $.34 with the current conversion rates. They’re small. But pineapple, $1.50 for one pineapple! Yum. More on food in my next post.