Church in Africa is very different than church in America.  I feel like that’s a pretty obvious statement, but I want to elaborate on some of the differences.  Here in Africa we hop into the car around ten o’clock and drive a few miles to the church.  There aren’t hundreds of people, and there isn’t even a building.  There are maybe twenty people, and we sit under a tarp in a courtyard of houses.  We sit on plastic chairs and wooden benches that could fall over at any moment, and when it’s sunny the tarp barely provides shade, and when it rains we’re barely covered.  There is no paid staff, and no specific preacher.  The men take turns preaching.  We open little bright pink song books and sing the same four or five songs every week, and we sing EVERY verse, whether the song has two verses or six.  The church service lasts two hours, with a long sermon in Swahili.  Instead of sitting with my friends I sit with Kate, Sadie, Hailey and a little African girl named Mary.  Instead of paper to draw on, toys or snacks, mothers give their kids scratched up CDs, wire, or straw to entertain them.  The older kids sit and listen silently.  At the end of the service you shake hands with every person before leaving.

But the coolest thing about the Swahili church services, the thing that I enjoy the most, is the singing.  In America we sing just loud enough that we can hear ourselves, but not so others can hear us.  We keep our hands down, and rarely clap or trill our voices or yell “Amen” in the middle of a song.  But here in Tanzania, they do.  They don’t care who hears them sing, and the belt out the songs.  They sing with passion and joy and heartfelt feeling that I’ve never seen in America.  They clap loudly and thank Jesus in the middle of a song by yelling above the singing, and it’s awesome.  They love the Lord and they aren’t afraid to show it.