First meal on an open fire...

What a wonderful weekend we have had! Sunday we were able to experience church in the village of Kaisosi after all 14 of us piled into the van and made the trek there. The church at Kaisosi was much different from churches back home, even the churches in Windhoek! Besides the fellowship, worship, singing, and sermon- church was also a time for distributing mail to the congregation, announcements on the happenings of town, and even going through what the itinerary would be for the following week. Most of the service was in Lucazi, the main language of Kaisosi. Kaisosi is a village of mainly Angolan refugees that crossed the border during the Angolan war. Their mother-tongue language (Lucazi) is different than the language of Rundu, which is Ru-kwangali. Fortunately for us, most of the service was also translated into English! Church was long (4 ½ hours) and hot, but it was also a great time of rejoicing. The singing was amazing! There were three choirs: the women's, youth, and children's choir. The youth choir was phenomenal and the children's choir was so full of noise! I was thinking about back at home, when to hear the children's choir we need 5 microphones and a listening ear. Here, their harmonizing voices were echoing throughout the church and could probably be heard from a mile away. Mark and I both couldn't stop from smiling.

Blowing on the coals to heat up dinner!

That evening, Mark got his first chance to drive the bakkie (aka, pickup truck) out to Blair's place. Blair (the Aussie mentioned in our previous blog), lives out in Kaisosi at the OVC. The five of us (Laura, Alysse, Blair, Mark, and myself), cooked dinner over a campfire. We spent some of the time with some national kids named Foxy and Dokie. They were so fun to kid around with, and also very patient with us asking probably ridiculous questions about Namibia and trying to repeat just a few phrases of Ru-kwangali over and over! We had a great night by the fire making an awesome stew and makeshift s'mores. :) It was so nice to take the time to cook over the fire...

On our drive home we parked the bakkie on the side of the road and got in the back of the truck to stargaze. Seeing the African night sky can take your breath away. The sky is so vast and abundant with stars. Sitting there in the silence and still of the night... makes you truly feel the vastness and beauty of God's creation.