Church Experience in Musoma

Go MAD teams always attend one of the local churches and on Sunday we were no different. We were asked attend a small rural church and be there at 9.30am - the starting time. When we arrived, bang on time (a first for the Campbell's!), we were the first ones there! We were soon greeted by a man who turned out to be a local evangelist. Over the next 45 minutes more of the locals arrived, mainly women and children and a number of other Go MAD volunteers and the service started at 10.15.

Being an Anglican Church, much was read and the congregation responded. It was all in Swahili so was hard to follow. There were readings and prayers and then some of the volunteers were asked to sing. As we were expecting this possibility we had a song prepared and we sang "My Jesus, My Saviour" which sounded a lot better than it had when we practiced in the truck on the way to church! 

A young Tanzanian man (who should enter for the Tanzanian X factor) led a number of songs in Swahili and after a while we found we could join in - although we still don't know what we were singing!

Andrew, a Go MAD staff member preached from Acts 9 about being fully committed to Jesus. At the end of the service we headed outside into the noon day sun where we all formed a circle and greeted each other Tanzanian style. 

As Andrew will soon be leaving Tanzania, there was a special church lunch and additional leaving service. The lunch was provided by the church for all who were there - rice, beans, cabbage and some nyama choma (cooked goat meat). It was a big thing for this little church to offer this to so many. It tasted really good and was much appreciated however it was humbling to be thanked by the church for eating their food.