Church in Mozambique...

After going to church this morning, and getting to experience an African church service like I have for the past year or so (so neat!), I'd thought I'd try and convey just what a neat experience it is, that way you guys can know a lil' bit about it :) 

The church we go to is located on a lil' dirt road with an over abundance of pot holes and ditches. It's funny cause that road used to be the main one through our town (a long time ago)! Wow! Anyways, we pull up, get out of our car, and file into church. It's just a big rectangular building with about 21 or so pews and 2 pulpits up front, one for the person who preaches that day, and the other for the music leader. In our church the men and women don't sit together. The ladies and girls go to the right side of the church and the guys go to the left. And random people sit in the middle. Sitting that way makes the singing sound really amazing because the ladies all sing on a higher octave and the guys sing low so when the guys and girls are all grouped separately it sounds really nice! ... We usually start of singing a few Portuguese or Lomue (sp?) songs and then pray etc. Then comes the special music time! :) African singing is... wow... you would just have to come and experience it! It sounds so amazing! Everything in our church is a cappella but man can those people every carry a tune and harmonize! The people who go up for special music (usually about 4-5 groups but sometimes more) they start singing in their pews. It starts out with one person singing and then all the people who will be going up to sing with that group will all join in and finally after they've sung their "Going up" song (it's normally a different song every week) they stand up and start walking up to the front. Only their walking is more of a shuffle with a beat:) It's really neat to watch their feet as they go up!!! Anyways, after the special music comes the preaching. I still can't really understand it all, but can get the basic point from the passage he's reading :)  After the preaching a guy gets up to do the announcements and visitors come up and introduce themselves, then we pray and afterwards the pastor, the music leader, and the visitors go outside and we go out and shake hands with them all and say hi :) And that is just a lil' glimpse at what our church is like :) Really though, this barely covers the experience... you guys will just have to come out here and visit :)