Chosi A (aka "the bat church")

It seems like I have been here much longer than 4 days.  My days have been filled with getting the house I will be living in in living conditions.  I do have help with the yard and house.  I showed you pictures of the outside of the house on my last post, but I did not introduce you to the man who keeps it looking nice. 

This is Hamisi (pronouced Ha-me'-see).  The mission provides security for the mission during the evening, nights and weekends.  Hamisi will be my security/yard man during the day Monday thru Friday.  I have been told he is the best yard man.  So far, I have found him to be very helpful and willing to do anything I need.  His English is pretty good, so he helps me communicate to others at times.  And he runs errands for me when needed.  When I begin going to the hospital or out to villages, it will be very comforting to know he is watching my house.

I also have help with my house work and cooking.  This is Tausi (pronouced Ty-oo'-see).  She will also be at my house for a few hours each day Monday thru Friday.  She will perform light cleaning duties and cook for me.  This will be helpful so that I can spend more time at the hospital or villages without having to do these duties myself.  This week she has worked really hard beside me helping me deep clean.  As I mentioned earlier, this house has not been lived in in a long time.

An interesting tradition here in Tanzania is that when a woman has her first child, she is then called "mama (child's name)".  So Tausi's first borns' first name is "Achillece"  or "Achi" for short.  This means Tausi is also called "mama Achi" (pronouced mama a'-che).  So she wanted to call me "mama Bethanie", but I told her Cheryl will be fine.  Cheryl is hard to pronounce here, so I am commonly called "Cheri".  I can live with that.

OK, I know, you are wondering about the title of this post.....so here is the story.  Tonight we went to Wednesday church service with the "Chosi A" congregation.  This church has two nick names.  One is the "bat church".  This is because the building is full of, well, bats!  All during the service, they chatter and fly about.  Also, as many of you probably know, where there are bats, there is also a distintive smell.  It is a little hard to concentrate on the service until you become accustom to all the bat activity and smell.

The other nickname for this congregation is "the watoto congregation".  "Watoto" means children.  As you can see by the picture of the congragation, the children out number the adults about 4 to 1.  That is if you don't count us (the americans). 

 

The american above is Randy Carroll from the NYA church of Christ.  He is visiting the mission for 3 weeks. He preached a great sermon on "How we should pray".  He plans to bring a youth group from NYA next summer to visit.  I am so happy to have more visitors to see what the mission is all about.  His interpreter is Menard.  Menard is a very important person at the mission.  He is over the shop workers and is very valuable help to all the missionaries. 

 This little guy came to visit me on Tuesday.  I am sure he just wanted to say "Karibu" (pronounced care-ree'-boo) which means welcome.  He is a little gecko.  They often dart up, down and across the walls.  Cute little guys.  There are other visitors which are not so nice.  On Tuesday, the men were mowing and one of the other missionaries had two unwanted visitors.  I am not going to show pictures although we have them.  He had two green mamba snakes which were killed by the locals.  One was outside, but the other had made it inside.   Green mambas are very poisonous.  I have instructed Hamisi that he MUST keep them away from my house.  I sure hope he takes that assignment seriouly!

 

Here is my thought for the day.