Sorry for not posting in a long time. We were in Michigan for a few weeks celebrating my sister’s wedding and Benjamin’s brother’s engagement, and we did not post while we were there. Now we’ve been back for a week and a half and honestly, I haven’t felt inspired to write. Blogging is harder than you would think. It can feel hard to describe emotions or something culturally that may seem so irrelevant to many westerners, but I’ll give it a go.
I titled this post song and dance because I wanted to describe a bit about worshipping with Zambians. It is very different than worship in West Michigan. We had church this morning and a large part of the service is worship through song. The praise team is made up of the housemothers from the children’s home and some of the kids from the children’s home. Sometimes there are a few others from the villages that join as well. The only instrument is a drum.
We sing some songs in English, and some songs in local languages. It took us a while to catch on to some of these Zambian worship songs, but we try! A lot of the praise songs involve motions or dancing. Zambians are almost always clapping or swaying while they sing. Other times we are all dancing in a large circle around the benches.
It is an amazing thing to watch some of the kids help lead worship. I was watching one of the girls from the children’s home this morning. She is about 9 years old. She was standing up front, swaying back and forth (she’s got the moves), her hands out in front of her, eyes shut, and in watching her it was like I could see a connection between her and Jesus as she sang and danced.
There is something so beautiful about teaching these young children that they can help lead worship and dance before the Lord. It is so freeing! (…minus the fact that I’m white and can’t dance like they can so sometimes it can feel embarrassing) As we live in Zambia longer and longer I want to become more like Zambians when I worship. I want to feel free to dance before the Lord.
