Voices from Heaven

Saturday night was a real treat.  The students of St Jude had a visit from the Loruvani Choir.  This is a group of Maasai men and women from the Arusha area who sing a combination of Tanzanian spiritual songs, western music (including two pieces from Handel's Messiah) and traditional Maasai chants and dances.  As we sat in the open-air auditorium with 500 students and the sun setting in the distance, the voices of this choir filled the room with such a presence that it brought us to tears.  They showed such passion and faith on their faces as they sang, and even when the words were in Swahili (which, even some of the Handel pieces had been translated into), they spoke in a language we all could relate to. Their voices were absolutely gorgeous!

                   (I tried to add a video here but kept getting error messages.  Apparently blogger.com only likes Puff Adder videos:) 

One of our coworkers, Jenny, teaches ESL to the teachers at the school.  On Sunday afternoons, she also walks over to a local orphanage and tutors the secondary students there in their English.  She decided to invite the kids to see the Loruvani choir with us.  Afterwards,  she brought them back to our kitchen where she had cooked all of us a huge pasta dinner.  We had a lot of fun sitting around the table with these teenagers, talking and laughing (and helping them with their inaugural attempt at spooling spaghetti around a fork).  Afterward we had a dance party in the kitchen, with a rather amateur version of a conga line wrapping around the room, dancing to LMFAO's Party Rock Anthem.  It was a great night overall... the choir, the fellowship around the table, the goofy dancing.  Our house was filled with the warmth of laughter and community.  We went to bed very thankful.