The typical American church service lasts about 1.5-2 hours. That certainly is not the case for Kenyan churches.
Dylan and I began our day by teaching Luke 4 (the temptation of Jesus) at Sunday School at Weru Worship Centre (WWC). In the U.S., Sunday School classes are normally divided by age groups, if not class grades, but in the class we taught, kids ranging from infants to high schoolers all sat in the sanctuary together. Most of the kids spend half the time staring at me and Dylan because it's not very often they see Americans. Afterwards, Dylan and I got a short break during which we met people coming into the church and played with the children. Little did we know that we would be in service for the next 5 hours.
The first hour of the service is called Bible Hour which is basically a sermon for the people that arrive early (essentially a sermon before the actual sermon). After Bible Hour, most of the sanctuary has filled up and there are probably around 200 people inside WWC. We then transitioned into a time of worship which is led by a church member named Edith (she's also the leader of the choir). After worship, Pastor Mwiti formally introduces Dylan and me as member of the GP team who have come to Weru to do ministry and serve with him. Next, Pastor Mwiti then goes up to give a message-the first of three. After Pastor Mwiti is finished, he invites up Pastor Karau who came back out from Nairobi to be there for the baptismal service which was going to be held after service. Pastor Karau then proceeds to give another message. Now, 96.8% of what is spoken/sung/prayed is in Kiswahili which means Dylan and I have no idea what is being said. By this time, we had been sitting in our chairs for a while and I know that I was getting pretty bored and restless. Finally, our guess speaker Konge, goes up to give the final sermon. Now I've mentioned before that Kenyan prayers are generally very long and their messages are no different. If your message is 45-60 minutes long, you're doing fine; if it's 30-45 minutes long, you're cutting it a bit close; and if it's less then 30 minutes (which is the average American sermon, mind you), then you clearly haven't thought things through enough.
So like any good American college student, I begin dozing off during Konge's message and my body decides to help me out by having my head dip up and down. So service finally ends literally 5 hours after Dylan and I sat down. As we walk out, we're both sort of out of it and look at each other thinking the same thing: "Oh my goodness...were we seriously just in there for 5 freaking hours?"
And our day is not done yet! We eat lunch (I was starving by then) and then we head off for the baptismal service. I was sort of wondering where and how the church would baptize its members and I got my answer when Pastor Mwiti told us that we would be hiking to the river. So there's Dylan and me, wearing our nice church clothes, walking on dirt path on the hottest day in Weru yet.
The actual baptism was pretty cool. Around 10 people were baptized that day by Pastor Mwiti in the river. Most Kenyans don't really swim and so most of them were pretty shocked to say the least when they came out of the water. By the time we get home, we're exhausted but the neighborhood kids come over to our host family's house too. So what can we do except run around and play with them?
By now, we're really exhausted. Fortunately, we have nothing to do that night and so we enjoy dinner with the family. Tomorrow, Dylan and I will begin teaching at the local primary school. Pastor Mwiti arranged for us to teach there Mondays and Tuesdays from 8-noon and so we're pretty stoked about being able to teach kids. We decided to turn in early because we would have to wake early the next day. So much for the day of rest.
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