THROUGH THE OPEN DOOR OF THE CENTRAL CHRISTIAN CHURCH

In another blog we had a glimpse inside the door of the building which we used to house the Gospel Tract Center. This week we shall enter the door of the companion building which was constructed to house the worship services of a church. Since we did not have an existing city church in the immediate area, I served as minister there in addition to the work of the tract center. The building came fairly well equipped The former owners took only the musical instruments with them. We did add a speaker in the cry-room/nursery, and had the interior painted and carpeting added. We also added roll down security gates to enclose the entries. As you will note in attached picture, we made it a practice to light the the decorative windows the front of the building from the inside at night.

To let the citizens of the city know that both the church and the Bible Shop were there, as soon as it was ready for use I stopped in at the funeral service which was in the building directly opposite ours on the other side of the street. They did not have a chapel, so for the rest of our time in Africa, they steered many people to our building for funerals. We were convenient, our chapel could be entered with no steps one side of the building, and we were very easy to find and were nearly always available on short notice.

Those funerals varied considerably. Some used Scottish bagpipes, and one for a member of the motorcycle club, filled our space with motorcycles, but for our purposes, they all brought many people to our address and those who arrived a little early often came into the shop to get acquainted. Since I was not usually, though on occasions involved with the actual services, we also met many visiting ministers, and a few also used our quick-printing facility for their news letter printing.

On one occasion I did preach the funeral for a couple who had been killed in a "home invasion" type of terrorism. Their estranged son came in ragged and holey blue jeans, while a group of his friends arrived appropriately wearing all black. It may have been the first time any of them had ever been in a church building.

It was our custom to have a joint Vacation Bible School with our sister congregations. They were so successful that Phyllis and Rolland added weekly after school classes of the same type, in fact using packets donated from America, as we had also done for the DVBS classes.