Monday, August 11, 2008

The music that welcomed us to the Congo

I wish I had a longer clip to post. This is a small sample of some of the praise and worship music played at the welcome ceremony in the Congo. The people sing with all of their hearts. The music blends one song with another to make a continuous song of praise to God. If someone can understand the dialect they may correct me, but when we were there I was told that they were singing: "There is only one God and Jesus is the Lord". The people gathered in a circle, and clapping and singing. There were some in the middle of the circle playing drums. Others played shaker boxes (tin with bb's) to the beat. There was one lead singer that sang with an amplifier speaker... all together made a spectacular sound. The fun part I don't have on video (others on the trip do), was after watching some saw me tapping my foot and pseudo white-guy dancing and pulled me to the middle of the circle to play one of the shakers. They also pulled Pastor Baker into the circle and thankfully he danced more like a mzungu than I did (again thats a video I don't posses)... They do say its always easy to spot a mzungu during singing. They are the ones not moving :)







The second video, you will also see Fred do what he did best on the trip: gather children to hand out candy...

I hope you enjoy the small samples, I plea to my fellow travellers to post some pictures, stories and maybe some video of the white men dancing. I hope to soon get copies of all of their pictures so I can share more of the trip experience with you. Don't forget to leave a comment every now and then.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I enjoy all of the stories you have blessed us with. It gives us a chance to see what it was really like. What a blessing you were for them, just taking the time to show them someone cares.

Trinka said...

I'm SO enjoying this blog - please ... all of you ... keep posting as long as you can still think of things to post. :)