This morning for Easter Sunday, we went to Kibubwa Mennonite Church. It's a village church in the Zanaki language area. We visited it once before, back in November when we took our two guests from the States (Bill and Dave) there. We had such a good time that we wanted to return to spend our Easter there! The choirs are great, the drumming even better, the teaching solid, and the people friendly. It's about 50 minutes away from our house, so we can't go there every week, but we sure have enjoyed our two visits there!
Today was special because we took along some Zanaki books to sell. There is nothing quite as fun as literally putting mother-tongue Scripture in someone's hands for the first time! It's not really okay to take a camera to church, but if we had taken ours along with us today, we would have taken some pictures. Three of our favorite snapshots would have been of the following:
Picture #1: During the announcement time in the service we told everyone that we had brought Zanaki Luke, Ruth, Jonah, and an evangelistic story tract to sell after the service. When the closing prayer was said, a group of people immediately surrounded me (Michelle), and I only had one copy of each book with me to show as an example. Andrew volunteered to go to our truck to get the other copies for me. He unlocked it and pulled out the box, then turned to close it up and bring me the books, but he couldn't move! He'd been swarmed! Fifteen people were crowded around him so tightly, desperately eager to see the books, that he didn't even have space to shut the car door! He came pretty close to selling out of books before he made it back to me.
Picture #2: The church has two choirs, an adult/teenage choir and a little girls choir, which has seven girls ranging in age from about 10-13. The choir girls were some of the first to approach me when the sales time began. Being kids, of course they had no money to buy books, but they were eager to see them. One girl politely requested to look at a book, even though she wasn't going to buy it. I gave her the copy I had of Ruth, and much to my surprise, she started reading it aloud! She took turns with two other girls reading it aloud, while the others listened. When we'd sold most of the books we'd brought and were heading back into the church for sodas with the pastor before leaving, they were still reading. We made a deal with the girls - if they promised to share the book among all seven choir members and to write a song in Zanaki based on Ruth and sing it at church next Sunday, we'd give them the book for free. They burst into huge smiles, solemnly promised, shook our hands and ran away giggling with their copy of Ruth in their own language. I think next week Kibubwa Mennonite Church is going to have some mother-tongue music for the first time!
Picture #3: When we re-entered the church after the greetings and sales time, there was a woman sitting by herself on a pew reading her newly-purchased copy of Zanaki Luke. We chatted with the pastor for a while, drank some Coca-cola, and after 20 or 30 minutes, said our good-byes and walked out to our truck to go home. When we left the church, the woman was still sitting there reading, completely immersed in the book, her feet propped up on the bench in front of her, looking rather comfortable and like she just might stay there for a while longer.
Praise the Lord - He is risen!
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