Sunday was a long day so we'll give you small doses to help you get through!

The day began with much discussion over the guest house plumbing.  None of us seemed to have water in our taps, but some of us were astonished to have found functioning, hot showers.  Such luxuries of course come at a cost - Isobel was woken just before dawn by a great steaming torrent of water pouring out of her bathroom all over the bedroom floor, totally saturating the rush matting.  Had she been astute, she would have previously noticed an overflow pipe directed at the waste paper bin, in an ominous fashion, indicating that this was not an isolated occurrence.  The bin was however in fact a basket, not a great vessel for collecting escaping water, so water was simply splashing everywhere.  Meanwhile 2 doors away, Paul was ‘being a man’ and taking a ‘shower' in the only dribble of cold water that was issuing from his shower unit!  Andy didn’t seem to have had any water at all in his room, nor any sleep, so he wasn’t at his most chirpy at the breakfast table!

We headed off to the cathedral next door to attend the early morning English service.  As Byumba is a bit of a backwater, where little English is spoken, there was a very small congregation so the singing was a little feeble, though as we reached the end of the first song a musician arrived with a keyboard tucked under his arm, which he duly plugged in and joined us to enrich the music, about 3 notes from the end of the hymn!  Jonathan gave  a talk, dressed in a rather ill-fitting cassock, and a comparatively small choir sang with the usual enthusiasm.

As the short service was drawing to a close, people started to dribble into the huge cathedral for the Kinyarwanda service, which we were told would be a most auspicious occasion, giving thanks for the completion of the initial plans to build a replacement cathedral, as the current cathedral, with capacity for about a thousand worshippers, is not large enough.  We were told there would be many visitors attending, which gave us the indication that we were about to embark on a seriously epic service.  However, at this point we didn't know quite how many hours we would would be in the cathedral for!

Hold on - part two of Sunday is coming up......