A few Sundays ago I was asked by the Rafiki village administrator, Debbie, to join her and the two other mini-missionaries for worship at her church. How kind. Of course, I wanted to attend my first African worship service, but then I found out that it begins at 7 AM. Yes, you read that correctly- 7 A.M. So on my day off I had to get up early.

As “Madam Debbie’s” bungalow is literally 100 feet my my house, the walk over to her house for the ride to church wasn’t extensive. We arrived at her house at 6:30 for the drive to church. The church we attended was the Katawa congregation of the CCAP. That’s the Church of Central Africa, Presbyterian. Check out their website. You’ll see they’re very Reformed.

Above: Photos the the congregation and their building, which was packed to the rafters!

Due to the high cost of paper and pens, the entire church “bulletin” is read out. That takes a while. There were three (yes, three) different choirs that sang, lots of prayers (most of which I could only understand about a third due to their accent and my inability to follow it), three hymns, a few greetings of those around us, and a fairly basic sermon that began two hours after the service began. The entire service lasted over 2 and 1/2 hours. There are three services each Sunday here. One traditional English (the one I attended), one in Tumbuka (the common language in these parts), and one that is contemporary (English).

When we took our seats at 6:50, there were about 50 people in the building. By 8 AM (yes, an hour after it started, people were still arriving), I’d estimate that over 400 people were there. And there are scores of CCAP churches in this part of Malawi. You can certainly see that the church is growing in Africa!

Of course, I wanted badly to video the wonderful singing from the choirs, including their amazing hand and body choreography, but I was worshipping God with my brothers and sisters, not making a documentary.

The choirs danced from their seats to the front of the church and back again! I was in full culture shock!

Prior to the service, I did take the opportunity to video these two groups preparing for the service. This should give you a taste of the amazing time we all had worshiping God that Sunday.