church in livingston.

Our bus pulled into Livingston on a Sunday at 3:00 in the morning.

We decided to attend church there--it was the only LDS church we attended in Africa.

While Sean and Jeff went to the airport to try to recover Sean's lost luggage, Nick, Sam, and I took a cab from the bus station to the chapel. It dropped us off somewhere around 7:00am.

The chapel had a locked gate surrounding it. We had at least 2-3 hours to wait before anyone would arrive. So we sat on the curb and began to wait.

Nick's pack, Sam's pack, my pack.
And the chapel. 

The chapel was located in a pretty nice area of town--by a lot of embassy and charter school-looking buildings, if I remember correctly. Waiting there was fine.

We ate some clif bars for breakfast. Nick played with his phone. I took my malaria pills. Sam read. We all twiddled our thumbs. And we watched the sun come up. It was beautiful.

Goooooood morning, Africa.

Sean and Jeff eventually joined us, sans luggage. Poor Sean. He did eventually get his luggage though, no worries.

Church was interesting. It was in English, more or less. Topics were very simple, but very heart-felt.

We sat in the back of the chapel, and to be totally honest, we were a struggling group of haggard-looking Americans. We were all super tired from having spent the night on the bus. Our clothes were dirty, hair greasy, faces unwashed. Multiple numbers of our group nodded off time and again. Yet, everybody was so kind.

I went to Sunday school afterwards just for kicks. I really enjoyed it. They have a hunger to understand. They ask lots of questions, and there is a lot of discussion. Everybody has an opinion, and everybody tries to prove their opinion by offering some kind of scripture.

At the very end, the teacher timidly asked if I'd be willing to read a paragraph in the manual.

I said, "Of course."

I read a paragraph.

He looked delighted. "I didn't know you could read so nicely!"

I didn't know what to say. I hadn't said anything for the entire class, but I find it hard to believe that he didn't realize that I was American. Still, being able to read English well has always been something I've taken for granted. In that room, however, it was a gift. So I smiled and said, "Thank you."

"Please, continue reading?"

So I read the next page and a half of the manual. They all listened so attentively.

After the lesson he shook my hand and thanked me profusely. And he apologized for his stumbling English.

I felt extremely humbled.

We made eye contact, and I knew that language was really no barrier when it came to understanding how human we were in that moment. How similar. How dissimilar. We both knew it and acknowledged it.