Mom, I went to Church

Let’s talk about the Sunday’s. I left them out of the previous entry for a specific reason. Mom: with the exception of last weekend because I was traveling, I have been to church every Sunday. The first church I went to is called Winners Chapel. The rest of the fam had gone to their respective churches early which left me and Carrey to go by ourselves. What an experience. This church has a main sanctuary of around a thousand seats, possibly more, and then overflow seating that can take in 2000 outside in these huge tents. The service was a little over two hours long and a lot of it had to do with witchcraft. About 75 percent of Kenyans believe in witchcraft. They are the agents of the devil. People gave testimonies during the service in which they praised God for killing a witch in their village back home. Everyone erupts in applause. The sermon was very passionate. I’m not a hundred percent sure what it was about, but he was yelling a lot. Inside the tent was a flat screen TV with speakers. Kenyans love loud music and loud sermons apparently. It was so loud that I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying because the speakers were distorting so badly. Very interesting service though. I was definitely the only white person there so I got a lot of looks. That always adds to the experience.

The next church I went to was Carrey’s Dad’s church. It is a Nigerian Church in the Hilton hotel downtown Nairobi. What made this experience so interesting was that the pastor had come over the night before with his wife for a private prayer sessions. I went downstairs to sit in for about 45 minutes and I was happy I did. The way they pray is unlike anything I’ve seen. Everyone is standing, even if it was just five of us. Everyone sways back and forth, and everyone is very passionate about what they are praying for. The final prayer took about ten minutes. The rest was just question and answer time about things that were going on in their lives and what God meant by each thing that had happened. So the next day I went to the church. There was a small half hour bible study before the service and since the pastors wife knew me, she made me, Carrey and his Dad sit in the front row. As if I didn’t already stick out enough in a crowd of a few hundred Kenyans, the one white guy (me) was in the front row. Throughout the whole service, 4 hours in total… yes 4 hours, people would randomly come up and take pictures of me. Very awkward. This service was a special one because they had a guest preacher. This lady had some fire. She preached on and on about how men weren’t living up to their roles and how women need to find stronger men. She stepped down from the pulpit after about five minutes and spent the last hour and a half pacing back and forth about two feet in front of me. I was the only white guy there, in the front row and arms length away from a prominent female evangelist preaching about how men are the cause of the problems in Kenyan families, all the while people are coming up to take pictures of me. For 4 hours!!! After a short reception for visitors, I was happy to go home.

Going to Laura’s church two weeks ago was quite a treat. This church is called Mavuno and it would definitely be the church that I would go to if I lived here permanently. They are known for being very contemporary and for being focused on today’s issues. This service was all about what you need to do to accomplish God’s work. If you don’t have any money, there are serious limits to what you can accomplish. This was all about saving money and how to be responsible. The underlying point was the money is not evil but the love of money is what’s evil. If you say you want to do God’s work, be serious and build some wealth so that you can do great things. One of the men in the congregation was a CFO of a Nairobi based consulting agency. He came up and talked for about twenty minutes about how to save and the downfalls that Kenyans have fallen into. The pastor actually said, “Let’s be serious… Kenyans are awful at saving money as are African Americans in the United States. Let’s change that right here, right now.” The music was great, as was the music at all of the other churches I went to, and so was the message. People actually walked away uplifted and had a plan for how they were going to do the best work they could. I’m going back there this Sunday with the rest of the fam.