Frank's Journal 12/7/08

Sunday. I attended the 8:30 morning mass, which is run by the youth group. They are the ushers, the readers, they bring up the gifts, etc. Fr. Mutiso was afraid that Fr. Wanjala would run into the next mass, since he likes to give longer homilies, but he finished by shortly after 10.

That was followed by the 10:30 mass, which they call high mass. You have to see the pictures of this! At the gospel, the woman who processed in with the gospel carried it in a plastic tub with her infant daughter sitting in the tub with it. There was, of course, lots of singing and dancing. These folks absolutley enjoy their liturgies. Maybe there's a lesson in there for us somewhere.

At 2:30pm, Consolata stopped by to take me to her small church community meeting. She was early, to allow us time to stop at her house, meet her three daughters, and spend a few minutes talking. She served me a Coke, which I have learned is viewed by your host as a blessing on her and her family. The jumalya (sp?) was a lot of fun. They begin with a rosary, then do the coming Sunday's readings, then whoever wants gets up and relates what that reading says to them. Even though they were talking in Swahili, you could get a sense of what they were saying and their conviction was very evident. They asked me to say something about the reading and I told them the story of Athanasius, the "black dwarf" who was so influential in the early church's Christology, and how he said you know that Christ is God because the people, who know there is only one God, pray to him. I told them they are the discerners of truth about God so I wanted to listen to them. At the end of the meeting they take roll. If you are absent, they try to find out why. They told me that Duffy and I were enrolled as members the last time we were here and that we have been absent with apologies since. They then collected dues, 100KSh per person per month. I paid up my share for 2008, but told them they would have to collect from Duffy themselves, since I am in Group A and she is in Group B. (The group has about 56 members divided into 2 groups).