Igreja de Cristo Kapango
One of the churches planted by the Angola Mission Team is the church at Kapango.
When the mission team arrived in Huambo, Angola in 2011, several events led to this church sprouting up. Now it is self sufficient and is fully facilitated by local leaders. The team occasionally visits to encourage the people there, but they have pulled back to allow the church to grow on it’s own and started to focus their energies on a new church plant.
Robert, the boys and I went out to the neighborhood of Kapango the 2nd Sunday I was in Angola. We drove a while through town and then neighborhoods and then off onto a really terrible dirt road until I couldn’t tell if we were still on a road. All of a sudden Robert stopped the car and said, “We’re here!”
I looked around for a building, but all I could see was a makeshift pavilion with bright orange fabric for walls. These “walls” only wrapped around the midsection of the structure. The corrugated tin roof was not connected at the top with a 12” gap along what should be the ridge. This structure was mainly for shade, because it was not going to keep anyone dry.
There were several people already inside as we made our way to a bright blue plastic chair to sit. The worship songs began and sweet voices filled those fabric walls with such exuberance I pressed down the tears welling up.
I kept thinking how silly I already appeared with all my cameras (yes, plural), I could not start weeping for no apparent reason. But I couldn’t suppress the Spirit and how He was moving through the people there. The people around me are shouting for joy in Jesus with hopeful, sweet spirits. When it was time to pray, the leader asked the church to pray and they prayed, aloud, all together.
Curious children were laying on the ground to see under the fabric wall to find out what was going on. My head was spinning with thoughts of home, the juxtaposition of my church with this church, and just how amazingly wealthy home is.
Then the preacher asked Robert to introduce the woman with him that was not his wife--that would be me. Everyone laughed and I was welcomed with a song from the whole congregation.
Robert offered a word of encouragement for the congregation and asked for prayers of healing for Teague’s ankle. There was a song for the mamas, a song for the youth and several songs for the whole congregation.
The preacher brought the lesson in Portuguese, a translator spoke in Umbundu for the congregation and Robert translated for me. As much as I tried to concentrate on the sermon, I kept thinking, this church is here because my friends listened. They listened to God when He asked them to leave their friends and families and go to a far away land and plant churches.
They listened. They planted. God sprouted. When it was over, everyone walked out in a line shaking hands until everyone in the church had shaken everyone’s hand. Small talk ensued. Chairs were taken back to storage.