We go to church

This morning (Sunday) I did something I haven't done for quite a while - I went to church. Actually as company for Julie who wanted to go to a service here, and besides I thought it would be interesting, which it certainly was. It was an English service in an Anglican church not far away from the Christus Centre where we did the workshops.

Not surprisingly, it was a little less restrained than your typical Australian service (at least the ones I remember). The singers were all young and resplendent (my word for today) in green satin robes. They did some gospel style numbers as a warmup for the service and led the singing throughout. And there was lots of clapping and Alleluias and Amens.

There were lots of kids who took part, and they were very cute.

Julie managed to take a very short video snippet of the kids:

The sermon was preached by Pastor Antoine, who was a great performer. Very passionate and a compelling speaker. I wasn't bored for any of the 35 minutes of his sermon. He referred to his experience in the Genocide, which was very chilling. Our friend Rosine has also opened up to us about her experiences, and I understand it is only relatively recently that survivors have felt able to talk about it. I'm not ready to write about it yet, but I will talk about it in a future post.

One interesting thing to note was that they are fundraising for a new toilet block and to pave the grounds. This is to meet the standards of Kigali city - another sign that Kigali is continuing to move ahead.

The church is quite big and they had a good turnout. The last part of the service wa a bit rushed owing to Pastor Antoine going a teeny bit over time, and as we were leaving the people were arriving for the Kiyarwanda service. Judging by the first few minutes that we heard, that service promised to be even more rousing than ours had been.