Church on a Saturday (Zim)

I went to church this Saturday. That might not sound like an exceptional statement to those who don’t know me, but those who do realize the gravity of the situation.
One of our crew members is a 7th Day Adventist. They apparently go to church from 9am-4pm (at least in Mhondoro, let me note that I know nothing about the religion) every Saturday. That would be enough for me, personally, to change religions.
By the time we got there, the whole congregation was waiting. The pastor switched to English just for us while the rest of the congregation had no idea what he way saying. They were incredibly welcoming, sweet and friendly people, but it was incredibly awkward. Their church is temporary because it is outdoors. It consists of a wooden frame and a straw roof. Women sit in the dirt and men sit on small splintery logs. The whole English sermon was geared towards the fact that they wanted to build a real church. They went on and on and on about how they needed money to build the new church. The irony of the whole situation is I thought the church was perfect as it was. There was such a simplicity of being in nature. You sit in the church and the cows amble by just a few feet away with their reassuring cowbells. The grass blows with gusts of wind out in the field and every so often a red flower would drift down from one of the trees as it began to shed. My god would love that church and not want to be separate from such natural purity.
But, for the congregation, it’s “providence” that their new best friends from America are going to raise enough money to build them a church. Great, so imagine the pressure, if it really is providence and all they built up. If we don’t raise enough money for them, will the whole 7th Day Adventist church in Mhondoro stop believing in God? That’s enough to stress a person out! Even the bible verse in their sermon was geared towards us raising money for them. What would happen if we couldn’t?
What compels these people to come sit in the dirt each Saturday for so many hours? I looked at these poverty-stricken people and realized that it is their belief in god that gets them through life. How is it that people that need god the most and tend to see the least relief belief in it the strongest? These people have nothing, they are literally starving, but they believe in god day after day. Will god ever answer their prayers? How do they still believe when god does nothing to bring them food or even basic sanitary conditions? I would think that with every senseless death of someone they loved they would believe less, that after all their praying for god their plates are still empty that they might doubt. Where is their god? Is it a lack of questioning, education, thinking for themselves, a need for control that they continue to believe in ignorance? Is it because without hope they have nothing and god gives them this? It is because they see god in every backbreaking sunrise and it doesn’t matter how hard life is because they are there? Is it because they don’t know how much better things can be in another place and how bad they really have it here? Do they just need something to believe in when yet another child dies? Where is their god in times like this? People are dying.
Their god is not my god. My god is around me and in the mountains, the ocean, the space between the stars. I am not fully sure where my god is, or what it is, but it’s not theirs. My god is not waiting for Jesus to come save me, waiting for things to improve. But I hope my god talks to their god to remind them they are there waiting patiently in this darkness. Are we supposed to be their god and raise the money for this church? How do you pick one cause over another in this starving country? How can there be too many causes to pick from, where is their god?
I don’t know where their god is, but I know one thing, their belief in god is causing these people to come together in hope. Maybe one person is telling them how to think, but maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe their god is their community, their hope, their support.
Sometimes I think life would be a lot less frightening with a belief like theirs, but I can’t do it, it’s not for me.
So I may have found myself trapped in church on a Saturday as providence for the congregation to build a church, so long as Robin and I could raise the money, but now I have been to church in Africa, and a beautiful one at that. As we walked back to the town’s center with our crew member’s mom we passed the bar. Her husband grabbed me and pulled me into the crowded room. (He told me several times on the trip that he wanted to get me drunk, I don’t know why he made this his mission, but he did). That’s a typical thing in Mhondoro, the women at church or working and the men in the bar.
There I was sitting in a bar on a Saturday. I realized I have spent much more time in bars than in churches. But I don’t think that makes me a bad person, we all find god in different ways.
After we got back to the camera crew, I told the boys that I went to church. I expected surprise, but it turns out two more of them are 7th Day Adventists. The other two are very religious as well. It’s interesting how the majority of people here are Christian. Did they give up their ancient religions without a fight I wonder?
I wonder what these boys think of me. On our third day of filming one of the guys told the others that he wanted to marry me. Now as he’s gotten to know me better, I can’t imagine if he could think of anything worse. There are such looks of shock on these educated, thoughtful, progressive university students faces as my layers are revealed. I don’t go to church, don’t cook, can’t sew, am not a virgin, can’t sign or dance, drink, go to parties and who knows what else. It’s funny because I feel so connected to these boys, but sometimes we are reminded that we live worlds apart. But maybe with these Zimbabwe boys and my U.S. self, just like the god of the 7th Day Adventists and my god, despite all our differences, threads reach across the gap and we can find solace in understanding and hope.