Sunday, January 4, 2008

Sunday, January 4

We had another new and wonderful experience at church today. We went to a huge church, the “mother church” of the one we attended last week. Again, there were several choirs and magnificent singing. Of most interest to me was that it was communion Sunday. Not being acquainted with this denomination, I was curious to see where on the scale of Catholic to Evangelical the worship would be. I guess I would say that it was very much in the middle. The prayers were said in a way I imagine to be similar to Presbyterian and the elements were handled in the manner of those churches who understand communion to be a remembrance only. What really interested me was that real wine was used and it was distributed by sipping from a chalice. Real wine vs. grape juice is such an important debate within the Methodist Church back home that this rather surprised me. I expected grape juice. Again, it was a very uplifting service, though I preferred the small church the week before even more, with its friendly informality and the full participation of everyone. From what I could understand and what Ruth translated to me, the pastor handled very well the matter of “Do not worry what you shall eat or drink. . . He made it clear that Jesus did NOT say “Do not do anything about what you shall eat or what you shall drink.”

Here is a photo of a precious child at church last week. I post it especially for my 3-year old granddaughter who would surely agree that this is a magnificent dress!

When we got back from church, the students were at the house. We had lunch and there was much discussion throughout the rest of the day regarding plans for the coming week. It's hard, when resources are insufficient to provide services to all the people in all the towns, to decide how to “triage” the need. Since there are insufficient funds to buy mosquito nets to entirely meet the needs, and insufficient funds to do HIV/AIDS testing in all the villages, decisions needed to be made about how best to use the limited resources. It was decided that nets would be generously distributed in one or two villages where the area is more marshy, and the testing will be done in three or four villages. Health assessments can be done in as many villages as time allows.

In the evening, the students opened all the suitcases of supplies and sorted them.