A snake in the grass September 8, 2008

Yesterday, after 3 or 4 times that she either overslept or cancelled on me over the last months, Claudia finally went to church with me. She and Rosalina are both Catholic (it remains a bit of a mystery with me how they ended up in a Pentecostal cell group) and even though I know one visit to an evangelical church will probably not have a miraculous effect, I really do want to try and subtly expose her to better theology… Shortly after Dr Woodrow started preaching, I noticed a small, thin snake enter the back of the church behind him (which is, after all, just a pole-and-bamboo structure) and seemed to crawl either into a hollow block, or between the cement blocks that form the preaching platform. I was curious to see what would happen (I didn’t think it could be very dangerous, being so small), and after about 5 minutes Claudia next to me, and Kent in the row in front of us, became slightly agitated. I couldn’t see, but the snake was crawling up onto the platform. It then went outside, though, and by the time Dr Woodrow noticed the excitement and asked what was going on, he was just like, “A snake? Outside? Okay,” and went right on preaching! The message was a review of a series of messages Dr Woodrow did last year on Christian love, and a painful reminder of how little effort one makes most of the time to intentionally show love to others. The service was otherwise remarkable for having a “record” number of Mozambican women present – Claudia, our regular widow, and 2 married ladies who have recently started attending with their husbands. Could our composition finally be becoming more balanced?

After the service we had lunch at my house and a bit of a visit, it’s so cool that gradually small and not-so-small talk in Portugues is becoming easier. I was glad for a few hours of peace and quiet before going to the missionary fellowship at SIL though. Angie and Allison will be there all week, since SIL is having its bi-annual (I think) conference. I went over there to hang out a bit on Saturday afternoon, and will probably miss them a bit, but I never complain too much about having the place to myself! The service was really nice – the youth group did the music and an SIL member from Botswana (they’re the only SIL people in the whole of Botswana) delivered the message. The kids have become really good at the music and it’s such a blessing, it’s strange how starved one can become for good, meaningful worship in song! The evening was only upset a bit by coming home and having no guard… After making Allison phone around unsuccessfully for an SIL guard to come, the guard finally pitched up at 19h30 – he had had to take his sick son to the hospital. I was glad he could come in the end! Today is a national holiday, as yesterday was the anniversary of the signing of the Lusaka agreements, and although I have a lot of work I can do, it’s as always a treat to be at home and be able to catch up on some other things as well.