Landuma Church Visit Sunday April 5, 2009

Today we had the pleasure of going to a local Landuma village for the regular Sunday service. It started with about an hour drive, picking up a few churchgoers on the way. Once we arrived and greeted some villagers, the church service began. It started with some singing. The first song was sung in French, then Susu and then Landuma. I think the remaining songs were sung in just Landuma. We had songbooks, so we could follow along. I learned that Isa is the Landuma name for Jesus. After the worship time, we had a time of prayer requests and then prayer. This reminded me of our Tuesday nite prayer services back home. After the prayers were finished, we had a lesson from the New Testament about the power of the Holy Spirit. The lesson was given in Landuma, but the missionary giving the lesson gave us the scripture references in English, so we could kind of follow along. At the conclusion of the service, one of the local believers invited us to stay for lunch, so we waited for awhile. During this time, another man brought up an issue he wanted to bring before the church, so that was discussed for some time. We took that time to walk to the missionaries house nearby and get a cold glass of water.
Back for lunch, we had our first meal of rice and sauce, a typical Guinean meal. The rice was put in a large bowl in the middle of a group. Then the sauce was added along with a few fish. We each had our own spoon that we used to reach in and gets bites to eat. This also gave us some time to talk with the missionaries about some of their work in the village. More on that later. Another hour ride and we were back home.