Worship in Kambala

Bishop Mameo’s home is in Kambala, a two hour ride from Morogoro. He has built a lovely house here which will be his home when he retires.

All fourteen of us were invited to the village to worship. And Pastor Sally was invited to preach at Sunday service.

We arrived early enough to have a quick tea at Bishops house, hosted by his wife, Rose. Three of his four children were also there. Sayoni, an older teenager, helped with some translating. And thirteen-year-old Evelyn was kept busy chasing after her lively two-year-old brother, Edwardi.

From his home, we were driven to the church where we were introduced to the women of the village and the pastor. A troop of young girls carried narrow benches into the pastor’s house in preparation of a second tea, this time including delicious mandizi (donuts,) to sustain us for the two-hour service.

After our tea, the girls swarmed back in to retrieve the benches, which double as church pews. 

Shortly after we heard the summons to service, which was a church elder using a metal rod to strike a metal pot hanging from a tree branch.

Our bench seats at the front of the church gave us the perfect view of the church processional—two deacons, followed by the pastor of the church with Pastor Sally, and finally Bishop Mameo, in all his bishop finery, brought up the rear.

One of the highlights for us in Masai worship is the choir and today was no exception. The group of young girls gave us several songs, accompanied with traditional Masai dance moves, as our toes tapped in time to the music.

The worship was in Swahili and Bishop Mameo translated the important parts for us. We had just a couple of Swahili hymnals so were able to sing along with a few of the hymns. One of the hymnal tunes was familiar—after a few strains we recognized the familiar tune of Blessed Assurance.

Pastor Sally preached today on the Prodigal Son. Her sermon was in English, translated to Masai by Bishop Mameo. Sally was able to draw parallels between America, Russia and Tanzania that made the sermon very personal for the village, Bishop Mameo said that the villagers would be talking about her sermon for months to come!

After church was finished, the team was happily surprised by several village women bringing out hand crafted jewelry. To say their wares were very well received is an understatement. Today their inventory was severely depleted!

Finally, our day ended with lunch, once again on the “church” benches inside the village pastor’s house. Rice topped with stewed beef chunks and beans and a side of fried beef were the order of the day. Afterwards, realizing we needed toothpicks (the typical end to a Tanzanian meal,) the pastor rushed out of the house. After a few minutes he came back in with a twig from a local bush. This is the same bush that is used to create a pen to keep in their animals and the long thorns, when plucked off, did a great job as a toothpick!