Prayer Email #6
Sent 4/23/2004

    Hello Friends! I apologize for how long it has been since the last e-mail, but I hope that things in your part(s) of the world are going well. God has definitely been at work here and continues to teach me a lot through my experiences with the Xhosa people. Let me share…

    
Easter Weekend

     This Easter I went with the Port Alfred and Kenton churches to Bedford, a small community about 1 hour from Grahamstown. The Xhosa Easter celebration has been something that I’ve heard about since I first arrived here in South Africa. I had heard that it was long, lasting from Thursday night to Sunday afternoon, but usually a lot of fun. It definitely proved to be both of those things. In lieu of time and length of e-mail, I will share with you some highlights:
 

• We arrived around 9 p.m. Thursday night. One might assume that this was too late to really accomplish anything of significance. Not so! We ended up still having a 3 hour service, and crawled into bed about 1:30 a.m. (this was fun, but a little disheartening considering we had to get up 3 hours later).
   

• Friday services supposedly started at 6 a.m. Sadly, Megan and I and the three girls we were staying with were the only ones to abide by this time schedule. Everyone else arrived at a much more sane time of seven. This sort of killed a bit of my momentum, because Friday is the longest day of the celebration. During the late morning/afternoon service we had seven different sermons on the seven last words, or phrases, that Christ spoke before He died, with a sermon of “introduction” before these began. It wasn’t as bad as I thought that it might be in my short-attention-span little mind, although I will just go ahead and say I think its unfair to give a girl three hours of sleep and then expect her to stay awake through 8 hours of services in a language she doesn’t understand. Chocolate. Next year, I will bring a LOT of it!
   

• Saturday services were a lot less formal. We had some forums, where people could share opinions on certain topics, a lot of praise and worship time, an open-air revival in the township, and at night, a Youth service. I must say that the Youth service was my favorite part of the weekend. It was really lively. (actually, everything the Xhosa people do in services are lively compared to our American styles, but the youth service even blew those other ones out of the water!) There was much singing and dancing and jumping about. Its hard for me to explain to you the joy that I find in watching these people praise the Lord. It is so heartfelt and unhindered. I kept thinking about the beauty in the diversity of all the different people worshiping at God’s throne one day in heaven.
   

• I should make some cultural comments. The food was delicious, and after much begging, the women allowed Megan and me into the kitchen to help. I learned how to make “Fat Cooks” which are basically doughnuts without sugar. Real yummy! We also helped in serving the food. This was really different from something in the States for many reasons. First of all, all food is served. There is no setting it out and having everyone come through a line to pick it up. Also, there is an unspoken order in which the food is served, starting with the old tatas (fathers) and then the older mamas, all the way down to the kids. Megan and I struggled with this at times, because we would either forget the order, or wouldn’t be able to tell how old someone actually was and categorize them appropriately. A mistake on our part would result in yelling and hand waving by onlookers. I could only laugh, and hope that they’d be forgiving of our ignorance.
   

• I have one final story to share from the weekend. I debated on whether not to share this with you all, but I will sacrifice my pride for the sake of humor.
  
  Megan and I experienced our worst language barrier mistake to this point on Friday afternoon. We had walked to the house where we were staying from the town hall where all the services were being held. Our first struggle was that it was raining, and although it had slowed down by the time we started our walk, it had been pouring all morning (through all 8 sermons) leaving the dirt roads of the township looking like raging rivers that emitted a strange fishy smell. At first I tried to delicately pick my way from dry space to dry space, but eventually I just started treading through water.
  
  After the walk, our next dilemma came when we discovered that the house was locked. This was quickly overcome when we found a broken window that we could climb through. So here we were, drenched and smelly, breaking into someone’s house.
  
  We were in the hallway trying to clean up a bit when we heard a voice from the room next to us. Megan went in to check it out while I tried to remove my shoes and wring out my feet so I wouldn’t spread mud throughout the house. When I joined her, I found her trying to communicate with a very old Xhosa woman.
  
  The woman clearly knew no English and our limited Xhosa skills were failing miserably. The woman was obviously sick in bed though and appeared to be trying to sit up and pointing at what we perceived to be the rubbish bin which was apparently doubling as a bedpan. So, being the kind-hearted, service-oriented missionaries we are, we helped her sit up and brought her the bin, thinking she may need to vomit. This did not seem to satisfy her though, and she seemed to be trying to stand up, so we helped her.
  
  About that time, for some reason, Megan got the idea that she may need to go to the rest room, so after getting her standing we moved her night gown aside and tried to hold the rubbish bin up to her bottom. This didn’t seem to be working either and she was still trying to tell us something in Xhosa that we couldn’t understand.
  
  So we decided to get her back in bed, and wait until someone who could speak Xhosa came in. When we got her tucked back in and seemingly comfortable, we went on with our own purposes for coming to the house. After a few minutes, one of our friends came in, and we had him go talk to the lady and see what we could do for her.
  
  Apparently she had just heard us coming in and had wanted to meet us! (we were something of a novelty the whole weekend because we were white people staying in the township, which does not really happen ever). Sadly, she got more than she had bargained for I think, and I don’t even want to think about what she thinks of white people now! I, however, have come out of the experience with a fresh resolve to learn the language!