Hey everybody! Sorry I haven’t blogged in awhile; everything has been really busy here these last couple of weeks. I’m trying to finish up all of my papers for school, apply to North Dakota for the summer, and really just enjoy the rest of my time here with my family while I can.
One thing I haven’t written about yet is the music and church services we have here on campus. Well on Sundays I usually attend our “home” church (that is literally 30 feet from our front door), but on Tuesdays and Thursdays we have the equivalent of Chapel here on campus. Both were quite an adjustment, but the anthropologist in me loves the cultural differences between our American style of worship and the contemporary Ugandan style of worship. Things aren’t all different though; much of the American way of doing things has transferred over, at least to Ugandan Christian University, which is relatively westernized.
Our Chapel services, or Community Worship as we call them here, are scheduled to be an hour long. If you’ve ever been to Uganda you know what I mean. They’re about an hour long every Tuesday and Thursday and they usually follow the same schedule every week. The service starts with worship, some in Luganda and the rest in English, which is directly followed by introductions and prayers. Someone is called forward to read the scripture passage the correlates with the sermon and then the Reverend will give his piece. Usually the end of the service involves some form of group prayer (The Lord’s Prayer, The Grace, etc.).
As a USP student we are required to attend a certain number of Community Worship services while we’re here in Ugandan. It’s been a good way for us to get involved with other Ugandan students and also to interact in a different way with the culture. Our place of worship is in a covered, but open auditorium with a stage and hundreds of those fancy chair/desk seats that most of us had in grade school. Before everyone sits down they wipe off their wooden seat. I used to laugh to myself when I saw them doing it, but now I find that I’m doing it myself. Just add that to the list of weird things Jess started doing when she came back from Africa…
Overall, I like community worship. It wasn’t always my favorite thing to go to, but I never minded it while I was there. The music is always good; we have drums, keyboard, and guitar usually. Anyone and everyone sings no matter of how talented they are, which some people find annoying but I think it’s a good indicator that our friends here weren’t raised with the same “I’m not good enough” mindset that usually holds us back from things we want to try. The messages the Reverend gives don’t usually resonate with me, but that’s okay. Church functions are a huge part of campus involvement here and it’s cool to be a part of something like Community Worship for a semester.
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Also, thanks for all of your mail guys. I'm leaving Uganda (for Rwanda) in a week though, so no more mail please, otherwise I'll never get it! :) Love you all.
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