I woke up this morning feeling and looking pretty nasty, so after breakfast Kristen and Adrie decided for me that it would be a good morning for me to sleep instead of work. I slept soundly from 8 until 11 and then decided to take a bucket bath since, well, at home showers always make me feel better. The cold water at least made me feel alive enough to eat some lunch and head down to the Clinic for the afternoon.
Thursdays we have staff prayer meeting after lunch so I was glad to survive the walk from our flat to Faith Alive in time to sit in on that. Today Uncle Thomas (also known as Pastor Love) informed us that it was praise day at the Clinic. A full hour of dancing and singing for our Lord--it doesn’t get much better than that. Or does it? See what us visitors didn’t realize is that Thomas was not leading the praise, oh no. WE were leading the praise. If you were the lucky (or unlucky) person that got called on you would run up to the front and start the next song to keep the cycle of music going. I was terrified when Thomas called, “Cait! Lead us in a song!” and explained that I only knew one-and-a-half Nigerian praise songs, and they had already been used. He laughed and told me that he would wait for me to share next week. Thankfully he called on Jon right after me and told him that he needed to lead us all in Kristin’s favorite Nigerian song to the Lord. Jon chose the song we sing in church that only has two words, which I thought was a smart idea. Kristen didn’t seem offended by his selection. So it went on like that, Thomas calling on people to lead us in their husband’s favorite song, their church’s favorite hymn, whatever came to his mind. We sang songs in Hausa, old Baptist hymns, and some song about humility where you had to “bend low”, which immediately reminded me of Edison High prom. My favorite was Dr. Kanu getting up and belting out a song in his native tongue that we all tribal danced to. Very few people chosen had choir-worthy voices and the microphone kept shutting off, but I think that is what made it so beautiful. A little taste of what praising without ceasing looks like.
Ima told me not to worry about work just make sure I got better so I went back to the apartment when I started getting light-headed again. I slept for another little while and got up to get ready for the rest of the afternoon. Today was Jon’s 26th birthday so we decided yesterday to give Baba the night off and take Mr. Draskovic out to the Net Cafe for dinner and dessert. Greg took us over to the restraunt and we grabbed the table near the fish-tank. Biana and I got burgers and fries (sometimes you just need American food), Adrie and Kristen got Greek, and the birthday boy got spinach and cottage-cheese ravioli. Good times! We all enjoy laughing so tonight we shared some good birthday stories. I fell upon a memory of a certain cousin blowing out my birthday candles one year because when the family started singing Happy Birthday I hid under the table... We enjoyed a scoop of gelato after our meal (Jon also got a monstrous piece of chocolate cake because, of course, he can) before heading home. I feel like I should continue in our time of praise but that will have to happen in my dreams.
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