Chuliumbo's First Fellowship Meal

  Sunday was the long anticipated Family Seminar Day at our little church in the cow pasture.

Native Bishop Eric Olgwae (?) had the first sermon in the morning on Marriage. It's a blessing to see him and his wife faithful to each other for 31 years. The morning service was followed by our first carry-in meal. Not just a food carry-in, but also jikos, wood and charcoal to burn, water for lemongrass tea, water for washing, and water to make rice and also ugali and cabbage. Tomatoes and onions, and ingredients for other dishes.

Cooks wearing thier lessos

Plates, cups, silverware, tables, and serving spoons, and oil, salt, and basins and  whatever all else. I had made the chicken on ahead, we bought some chapattis, and the rest of the food was made on-sight. 
  On a typical Sunday we may have around 60 people in attendance. So we figured we'd do food for 80. (Seriously, these people EAT !!!!) and hopefully we'd have some visitors. Our attendance this morning was over 100. I'm guessing the free food brought in a bunch of those. A bench can comfortably hold (ok so maybe the comfort part is stretching it a bit) but, oh, maybe 3 adults and 2-3 little children. But on the men's side, the back bench had 7 or 8 men. I had Heidi go ask Jake for one of the empty chairs the ministers use. That gave a little more breathing room for those men till yet another fellow came and squeezed on the bench. Didn't seem to bother them. 
 One fellow who attends frequently seemed to be just a wee bit drunk. At one point the minister asked a question and tho I don't think he was really wanting a verbal answer, one of the old widows started saying something. "Let her talk" the "drunk" yells and the minister complies after which this fellow starts rambling something about his wife leaving him after he became a drunk. The minister kindly replied that he's not quite finished with the message but afterwards someone would be glad to help him (drunk guy). Jeremy (I think that's the drunk guy's name) was become very agitated and soon jumped up and disappeared. Soon he returned, sat down for a little and then grabbed his things and almost ran out of there. Later in the afternoon he returned and "kept score" for some of the games being played which, beings he didn't understand the game and his scores were way off, was a bit annoying.
 But back to the food. Approximately $27 was spent to feed 100-ish people. I told Jake we should challenge the food committee at home to beat that :) The church passed an offering maybe 4 different services to help out with that.
 

Serving lunch. Jake was serving the cabbage and I the chicken. Joshua was sticking close to my side.

We did run out of cabbage and chapattis and the chicken was down to the last spoonful of broth

Starting on the left and going clockwise...rice with "soup" (chicken broth stuff), chicken, cabbage, chapattis, and ugali ( maize flour mixed with sorgum to give it more flavor and it's brown color)
And by the way, most of the "food" pictures are thanks to Stacy Byler.

Heidi and sweet friend

I was delighted that 2 of the women jumped in to help the children play games.

I told Jake I think Joshua and Jediah were about sick of people. Joshua would start screeching when yet another person wanted to pick him up. I finally took Jediah and told the girls I think he'd like to just lay down for awhile but then little Valentine came and just had to keep touching him ;}

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Little Joseph with his swollen leg

Doing up all the fellowship meal dishes

Jake had a good message in the afternoon. Some of the visitors had left but still we had a nice attendance.

After the second service the numbers dwindled some more and mostly it was just some of the regulars left for the games. Jake had brought along can-jam, corn-hole, and also a couple of soccer balls. It was a nice relaxing time and was topped off with a huge pan of pop-corn. It disappeared in no time..I saw some disappearing into a purse also..maybe that was for their children at home. It topped off the day when one of the women exclaimed, "It's like Christmas !"

Jake took a load of the further ones home and some of the rest of us walked to the Chuluimbo stage to wait for his return. While there someone told Joshua "you are my bruther frum anuther muther". Another fellow wanted me to come teach English at his church. Another, whom I believe had been drinking, came and was quizzing me on Israelite Bible history.

 We got home 6-6:30 and still had all the lunch dishes from carry-in to do. No, we didn't use paper plates an the water we could've used at church would've been from a dirty stream. When we went to drop off Brian (25) and his little brother, Joseph, Brian offered to come wash up the dishes for us. BLESS His Heart. So Jake, him, and the children did the dishes while I got some supper, washed up other dishes, an fed baby.

 I need to bring this to a close. A whole week has gone by and it is once again Sunday evening. Today we had a van load here for lunch. One fellow had to get back to go to work this evening so most of them didn't stay long. They did seem so happy to come. The one woman said that all her 56 years she has heard of Millimani (our part of Kisumu)but had never seen it till today.

 Joshua, another young fellow that recently started attending church and lives closer, stayed till Jake got back from taking the others home. When Jake returned, they played some croquet and Gerold Miller's youth came down and hung out awhile too. I popped some popcorn before they all left and Shonda Yoder brought a pan of yummy breadsticks down for us.

 Thanks for stopping by, I need to get some tired little people to bed.