This Bible passage, apart from being one of my all time favorites, was the starting point for the sermon I heard on Sunday.
Alex and I decided to go to church with Carol. She goes to a Pentecostal church in the village of Mogoditshane which is about 45 minutes outside of Gabs. It wouldn't take that long, except that we were taking combis. We had to take one combi from UB to the combi station and then transfer to another one to take us to the village.
Maybe this would be a good time to explain what combi's are. They're these little minibuses that are used for transportation here. They have about 4 rows and people are packed in like sardines. I can’t imagine taking them during the summer, when the temperature can be about 40 degrees Celsius! They always cost 2.70P (about 40 cents). It was great to get out of Gabs and see some of village life and how many Batswana live.
It was an amazing experience and a really moving (though admittedly very long) service. Religion is a huge part of life for most Batswana. Almost nothing is open on Sundays, because everyone is in church. Christianity is the dominant religion, though many denominations are present, ranging from African to the more traditional Protestant denominations to Roman Catholic. The service was in English. Well sort of. The preacher would speak and immediately the interpreter would follow it with a Setswana translation. It was chaotic at first but fine when we got used to it. The praise and worship was great, with some amazing gospel music. I've never been to an actual Pentecostal service though, and my Catholic upbringing still leaves me unfamiliar with speaking in tongues and the type of charismatic worship that was there, some of which was uniquely African (the types of crying out for example), but it's extremely inspiring to be around so much faith and you definitely feel moved by the Spirit.
The sermon was extremely long, but very good and gave me some material for spiritual meditation this weekend. The theme was "child-like faith": humbling oneself and trusting in God. It was about doing what he is calling you to do with utmost faith and not allowing for our adult minds to worry or doubt, but to put trust in the fact that, ultimately, His plan will be put in place and everything will work out for the best. This spoke a lot to me, since worrying is something I tend to do a lot. I've seen way too many miracles in my life not to have faith, and its the reason I still have my religion as a big part of my life. I know it's always important to turn to God and trust Him to take care of it and place me where I'm meant to be, with the people that are meant to be in my life, and doing what I'm meant to do. J
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