Day 4 - Church in the city

Today wrapped up DNOW for the church in the city. Since some of the youth were from other churches around the city, we woke up early so they could get back to their villages to worship back home. 

We got up around 5:30 and I think everyone slept much better. I know I did. We all got in late after the film and went right to sleep. 

All the boys and girls met at the church in the city and have a personal devotion including a time in the Word and a time in prayer.

Breakfast followed at the church followed with bread, jam and boiled eggs. There was enough for all the youth and even some for the church members who hadn't eaten breakfast. 

In order to provide extra time, we didn't have Sunday school at the church, just the main worship service. Joseph's preached on the book of Timothy and fighting the good fight and finishing the race. 

The service was great and had a time for each of the churches that were still represented to have an opportunity to lead worship. Our group participated with the youth of the church in Nacala. Several of the youth expressed their gratitude during the service and their enjoyment in the lessons. 

At the end of each service they form a line leaving the church allowing each member of the service to shake the hand of one another, similar to a receiving line at a wedding. Could you imagine how long that would take at Hickory Grove?

We had lunch at the church and sent off the remaining youth that traveled too far to make it back in time for their service. We had rice and matapa (reduced spinach like leaves in coconut milk). It tasted like a mixture of cream spinach and artichokes).  It's the best local meal I have had to date. 

When we left the church to go back to the Harrell's, a couple of us rode with the Lee McDaniel to take some of the youth from his church in nampula to see the ocean for the very first time. Lee said the largest body of water they would have seen would be a river the width of a street. 

It was pretty cool to see the expressions on their faces and see them run into the ocean so excited that they left all their clothes on. On the way back to the house Caleb and I went Mozambique style hanging off the back of the Landcruiser. 

Once we got back we finally had some down time. We will be leaving early in the morning to head to the bush so we only had to pack our bags and eat dinner tonight and this afternoon so we decided to go back down to the water and hang out and snorkel a little bit more. 

Tonight Becky is cooking us tacos and we will hit the bed early for a long day tomorrow. At 6:00am we will start off the day with a 3½ hr ride out to the village in the bush. 

A few of the kids in the church.