Prison

Yet another eventful weekend came and went. While Tim stayed home with malaria on Friday, Sara, Steve and myself went with PH and Luka to a Maasai village. This village seemed a little different than the a lot of the previous ones that we had been to in the past few weeks. There was a sense of real happiness and joy in the faces, instead of the tired, stressed and feared faces that we had started to become more familiar to. The air smelled of nag champa, which reminded me a lot of home because I burn nag champa incense while I study. The whole day was very upbeat. The choirs danced and sang with a great energy.

Saturday was wedding time once again. Only this wedding took place at a prison. One of the guards was getting married, and PH was performing the ceremony. It was an interesting wedding indeed. Not because there were prisoners there (there weren't any) but the fact that the choir had two electric guitars, a bass, and an electric keyboard. It was weird to see these things. I haven't seen an electric guitar in action since I left home. It was interesting to listen to, for they were really good but yet I didn't like it. It wasn't the fact that it wasn't my genre of music or anything, I guess it just lost something for me since we usually listen to choirs that do things with a drum at most. It seemed to lose something for me, which was an odd sensation because I used to play in a praise band throughout high school and part of college.

Sunday we went to the youth prison for a very special service. It was confirmation Sunday. Two inmates were among those that were being confirmed. For some reason I feel very attached to the prison visits. Earlier in the week I had communed with pardoned murders, and now I got to see two inmates be confirmed. I don't know if I feel that I am being called to prison ministry, but I do know that I felt a strong connection with the prisons just the same. Perhaps it is the fact that Jesus was executed by the state...

As time goes on here in Africa, I am finding out more and more that I am Lutheran. I had been pondering the idea that all people have the potential to do great wrong and the potential to do great right... Then like a stein of beer it hit me that I was thinking about Martin Luther's idea about being both saint and sinner. I may sound pretentious or even pontificate if I say this but... I think that I have really begun to understand the theology of the cross...probably not, but I am still seeing God in the places that I do not expect. I am beginning to understand that we must transcend far beyond the elementary notions that anyone is different in the eyes of God. We are all loved the same. We are all the children of God, no matter what we do. We are all brothers and sisters, and for me it is through Jesus the Christ that I understand this. That is how I understand this notion, but it doesn't mean that I am more right than my Muslim, Hindu, Bahai, Zoroastrian, Atheistic brothers and sisters. When we realize that we are all human beings and that we are all brothers and sisters. We all come from the same light, the same parent, the same space, the same universe.

Peace,
Peter