UMC!

This weekend, I was supposed to go to Morogoro where there is beautiful hiking and lush scenery. I was very excited to have a weekend excursion, but alas, my back got the best of me again. However, it turned out to be a wonderful weekend with few suprises.

Friday night I went out with a few peeps to get Indian food. By the way, the Indian food here is amaaaazing. After, we decided to go see "Safe House" with Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds at the movie theatre with "The Biggest Screen in East Africa". That kind of made me giggle. This weekly movie routine is nice, not going to lie. A new movie comes out every week, so it makes for a nice, relatively cheap, break. Yes, I said that the movies are relatively cheap. Crazy, n'est pas?

The next day I slept in and took a lazy day with some added homework. I also ran to the bookstore to pick up some books for my students who requested things to read and some dictionaries. We are officially teaching 7 students after we had some drama with the director. It's not as many as before, and it's not exactly what we'd like, but there isn't a whole lot we can do. We're still very excited for what we are doing though. While in the bookstore, I found this amazing collection of drawings and writings about Dar es Salaam. It's a perfect souvenir and i can't wait to show it to do. There is even a poem about riding the daladala!

Today I found my way to the United Methodist Church of Dar, which was most exciting. I sort of knew the general location of where the church might be, but really I had no idea. My friend Molly joined me on this excursion with vague directions from the minister I had met previously. After we got off of a daladala, we walked along one of the biggest roads in Dar, hoping to find its location. Eventually, I heard singing and followed my ears to a building that was partially hidden behind some trees. Luckily the sign had a cross and flame, so I knew I was in the right place! We were a little late, but were warmly welcomed into a decent size church with about 20 plastic chairs set up for the congregation. The music was obscenely loud. It seems to be the common thing here for churches to have concert like sound for its music and preaching. By the end I had an enormous headache and there was a definite ringing in my ears. Next time, I'll sit more towards the back.

The service was very nice. The minister had arranged for someone to sit next to me and attempt to translate what was going on. Of course, this was very difficult for many reasons. One, the volume, and two, it's a very particular translation of language that is not easy to do. He basically kept repeating the same phrases to me over and over again. During the first hymn, a white woman in her sixties sat next to me. Later I discovered that she is from Norway, but has lived in the U.S. and Tanzania a large part of her life. She was a realtor in Indiana, but just picked up and left for Tanzania where she has been running an orphanage she founded for the past ten years. I was so glad to meet her. During the service, there was a time where visitors went to the front and introduced themselves. It turns, about a quarter of the congregation were visitors. :) There was another woman visiting who I thought I recognized. It turns out she's one of the missionaries living in Tanzania and is from the Congo! I recognized her from her picture on the UMC General Board of Global Ministries website and was planning to get in touch with her. Wouldn't you know these two extraordinary people happen to be visiting this church the same day I was?!

After the service, the two ministers had all of the visitors in the church office to talk to us. It was a wonderful time for us all to just chat and learn about each other. They were sad to hear that I am only here for a few months, and asked when I would be returning because they could arrange a job for me. It was very sweet and I may take them up on that one day. It was very interesting to hear about the Methodist presence in Tanzania, which is not much. It's odd, since all of Tanzania's surrounding countries have very strong Methodist populations. I also was able to practice both my Swahili and French with the missionary as well as the main minister who is also from the Congo. I had such a great time simply chatting with them and I am looking forward to going back.

Following our chat, the Norwegian woman took us out to lunch at the YMCA downtown. It was good to finally know where that is. I've walked by it a bunch of times, but never knew. We talked for quite a bit about her experiences and ours, and I really enjoyed getting to know her. She will be a wonderful contact and she is just incredibly fascinating. When we go visit the village in a few weeks, I may stop by her orphanage and see what it's like. It's on the way to where we happen to be going.

That's about it. Oh wait! I want to share my Lenten promise for this year. I am going to attempt to memorize the Lord's Prayer in Swahili. Should be pretty rad.

Love to all!