(no subject)
2/24/08
Pastor Raishe is a rock star. At the first church we went to outside of Cape Town, his eyes rove the crowd and his voice spikes not booming but as lightning charging from his thin frame. At biblical phrases the congregation would rise up, amplifying his voice, echoing in song, and putting the sermon in everyone's mouths to roll as thunder with dancing.
This was familiar ground for one of our leaders, Bob, who had been introduced through the surrounding township of Gugulethu by Pastor Raishe, when he was a community organizer in the early nineties. The community center beside the church was a collection of shipping containers that Bob had welded together years ago.
The church filled up easily 300+ people and clanged and shook with the music. His wife lead the singing with lungs like an opera diva. Someone handed me a Xhosa hymnbook and I belted out what I could standing beside Bob and then as the women's guild surged out from the pews to dance was beckoned in to dance and sang and clapped and stepped with them. There was an older woman who clasped her arms across her chest and looked up to the sky and down to the ground smiling. The service was mixed Xhosa and English and we announced with translation that we were traveling to learn how the church was coping with HIV.
Afterwards we clasped hands in a circle and prayed with the elders of the church and then in the yard one of the women I'd been dancing with, embraced me and said that she was a caretaker for those with HIV. She helped them to take their medicines, visited them at home, and counseled them at the clinic. A young man asked how we though the church was doing on "this issue of AIDS" and having just arrived, I asked him. He said people may say one thing here, do one thing here, but when they go home... I cited something the pastor had said about God being with us at all times, but we were corralled back onto the bus too early and whisked to the top of table mountain. Our visit was too brief there but maybe just maybe it could be a small form of encouragement? Starting conversations?
Pastor Raishe is a rock star. At the first church we went to outside of Cape Town, his eyes rove the crowd and his voice spikes not booming but as lightning charging from his thin frame. At biblical phrases the congregation would rise up, amplifying his voice, echoing in song, and putting the sermon in everyone's mouths to roll as thunder with dancing.
This was familiar ground for one of our leaders, Bob, who had been introduced through the surrounding township of Gugulethu by Pastor Raishe, when he was a community organizer in the early nineties. The community center beside the church was a collection of shipping containers that Bob had welded together years ago.
The church filled up easily 300+ people and clanged and shook with the music. His wife lead the singing with lungs like an opera diva. Someone handed me a Xhosa hymnbook and I belted out what I could standing beside Bob and then as the women's guild surged out from the pews to dance was beckoned in to dance and sang and clapped and stepped with them. There was an older woman who clasped her arms across her chest and looked up to the sky and down to the ground smiling. The service was mixed Xhosa and English and we announced with translation that we were traveling to learn how the church was coping with HIV.
Afterwards we clasped hands in a circle and prayed with the elders of the church and then in the yard one of the women I'd been dancing with, embraced me and said that she was a caretaker for those with HIV. She helped them to take their medicines, visited them at home, and counseled them at the clinic. A young man asked how we though the church was doing on "this issue of AIDS" and having just arrived, I asked him. He said people may say one thing here, do one thing here, but when they go home... I cited something the pastor had said about God being with us at all times, but we were corralled back onto the bus too early and whisked to the top of table mountain. Our visit was too brief there but maybe just maybe it could be a small form of encouragement? Starting conversations?