Holy Saturday

On Holy Saturday, we went with Fr. Joseph from the Parish to an outstation for the Easter Vigil services.  We arrived a little early giving Father and myself (I'll explain later) a little time to prepare for mass.  We spent most of the time waiting and talking to the parishoners.  One of the young children saw us and started screaming and crying.  Every once in a while we'll meet some kids who are scared of us being as white as we are and a few of them cry, but this one was terrified.  His mother thought is was funny though.  She calmed him down enough that he was even willing to take Eva's hand,  but then Eva touched his hand to her hair and he started screaming all over again.  The Easter Vigil started outside with the Easter fire where the drums used for the mass were layed in front.  We were told they were using the heat from the fire to adjust the tone.  At the last outstation mass that Eva and Gaby attended, Father asked them if any of the volunteers wanted to participate at Easter and as I had previously expressed an interested the two Polish girls happily volunteered me for one of the readings...in Chichewa.  I had the reading ahead of time so I was able to translate it to find out what I was actually saying and I read it to myself a few hundred times to get used to the pronounciations.  I stumbled over a few words but I think it went pretty well.  No one threw anything at me or ran out of the church in disgust so I guess I didn't inadvertantly call Jesus a goat or insult anyone's tribe.  They also observed the tradition of baptizing people during the Mass and thirty children from the community were baptized.  The singing for Malawian masses is usually excellent and Easter was no exception.  It was distinct however in enthusiasm, participation, and VOLUME.  At one point after communion it was so loud that my ears actually hurt, but I didn't mind.  After the Mass we had to wait for Fr. Joseph a little bit so we tried to play tag with the kids outside of church, but we couldn't explain it very well so it didn't really work out.