Bacon!!!

Sunday morning, Grace and I toddled off to church with an Aussie couple and a Sudanese. We went a little wild and decided to try out the Pentacostal Church. It turned out to be quite pleasant, and a fun service! I didn't understand most of the sermon, even though it was preached in English and translated into Arabic... didn't quite follow, but I have to admit I got a bit distracted looking at everyone's clothes in the church! People were wearing so many beautiful fabrics and had so many amazing designs... and with our recent obsession with cloth and tailors... well, it was a bad combination in terms of paying attention to the sermon.

But, the worship was good fun, lots of time for prayer, and it's just always so much fun to be gathered together with Christians from all over like that.

Samaritan's Purse is working together with local churches to help them rebuild the ones that were destroyed during the war, and this service was held in a newly opened church. Of course, silly me forgot to bring my camera, so there aren't any photos. But take my word for it - it was a beautiful building. Certainly not over the top - just concrete bricks and a tin roof, but there was really nice wooden shutters, benches and even some wood on the alter. All the wood in the area is teak and mahogany (that's just what grows around there!), so it's all just beautiful wood, without even really trying to be that beautiful. Funny, but I realized how much I miss seeing nice wood in J city. Everything here in this city is made from iron, metal and concrete. So it was really refreshing to see some nice wood again!

I could go on about how impressive this Samaritan's Purse program is to help rebuild the churches - they don't go in there and just build the church, but they have very specific criteria and guidelines for what the congregation themselves have to provide in terms of man-power and locally available materials. But I won't go on about that, since I have more important things to blog about... like the little restaurant we found on the way home...

Grace and I had noticed that because of the Ugandan influence, there seemed to be a lot of chips (er, in North American English that's "Fries") around - something we don't find in our own city. So we were pretty desparate for some chips, which our friends so graciously found for us.

Grace and I porked down a plate of chips while everyone else drank pop. Man, those chips were SO good, and I could have eaten quite a few more! But we were supposed to be back at the compound to eat the lunch that the cook normally provides there, so off we went. I had a lovely nap while I waited for lunch... then I waited, and waited. Seems everyone else was waiting too... for the cook who had gone home because no one gave here any money to buy the food to cook for the lunch!

So off we went back to the chip restaurant! This time, we were all going to go for chicken and chips. As it turned out, they were out of chicken. BUT, the waitress said that they had sausage and bacon. What?! I couldn't believe my ears. Pork sausage and bacon. In this country. It's completely unheard of! So we porked out on more chips, this time accompanied by bacon and sausage - and, I might add, it was completely up to North American standards for sausage and bacon. Wow, we sure did enjoy that meal. And, it was about a quarter of the price of any meal that you get here in the city!

We also had really nice company over lunch - I chatted mostly with a Sudanese guy who grew up in the UK and Kenya, and is now working as a youth pastor in that town. It's so encouraging and inspiring to see people who are coming back here to help their own people when it would be so much easier for them to just stay put in the West. Really cool, really interesting guy. Turns out he knows some of the same people that I do in Nairobi, too, so I think he's about my age. Don't start getting any ideas - I think he's engaged already!! But he, too, enjoyed the bacon and sausage and chips, as he'd never been to that restaurant, either.

I'm just sorry that I don't have any photos of the sausage and bacon to look at next month when I start craving pork again...