Baylor's First Village Visit

Sorry for the long blogging silence.  The last 6 weeks have been crazy busy; moving into our house, going to Kenya on a retreat, having my family visit, having Brett's family visit....  I'm going to try and catch you up over the next few weeks.  

I thought I'd start with one of my favorite days I've had in Africa so far.  In February, my parents and sister were able to visit us for 10 days.  It was great to see them and for them to meet Baylor.  Their trip was... an adventure.  Or perhaps just a great example of cultural differences.   On the first Sunday they were here, we went to a village outside of Mwanza for worship.  The church getting together here is not quite the same as it is in the States.  Here it is an all day event.  After a 45-minute drive on what I thought was a great dirt road (my family thought otherwise), we arrived in a little village and were greeted by one of the elders.  He brought us into the building and sat us down front facing everyone.  Visitors here are usually treated with this special honor.  We sang, prayed, had communion, listened to a sermon, listened to Brett give his first sermon in Swahili (another honor for a visitor--being invited to give an impromptu sermon in another language), and greeted each member of the church.  This was not only my family's first village visit, buy also Baylor's.  She seemed to enjoy it immensely, which is good, since she will be spending a great deal of time there in the years to come.

Tanzanians love babies.  I mean really love them.  It's considered a huge blessing to have a baby (even more so than in the States) and it's a really big deal.  So, since Baylor is still so new, the church decided they would give her a blessing.  It was really special.  They held her up in front of the church and prayed over her.  Then they brought all the children in the congregation up front to pray for all of them as well. 

After the service was over, we were invited to one of the member's houses for a meal.  We spent the afternoon either in the dining hut or in the courtyard outside.  My sister rocked a little girl to sleep, my dad walked to the village center to have a coke with the elder, and my mom enjoyed playing with her granddaughter under a tree.  My parents lent their camera to one of the guys and he walked around taking pictures of everyone and everything.  Her seriously took over 100 pictures. The battery almost ran out.   After 3 hours of waiting, we were finally served lunch: rice and degaa (little whole sun-dried fish).  I went heavy on the rice.  After the meal we drove home, exhausted after our 8-hour event, but happy and content.