Ethiopian Orthodox Church Visit

In October, we met two Ethiopian women on the beach and exchanged numbers. Helen knew about the Ethiopian Orthodox Church service in Newport News that I'd heard about and said to call her when we wanted to attend. I decided to do the trip the first time with just Nebyat, check things out, etc. Neb and I had a special afternoon. We arrived in the rain and I noticed immediately the headcover all the women were wearing in the parking lot. Panicked a bit, I found, actually Nebyat found a scarf in the car and we met Helen at the door. We left our shoes outside the door to the sanctuary and entered the already-started service. The men and women sat on opposite sides of the church. The women were covered by their mostly white scarves. Children ran in and out of the room from the adjacent space. Incense was lit and carried around the room with blessings. There was singing and drums. The service lasted on this day 3 1/2 hours; I'm told that's an hour longer than usual. The group is working toward the goal of having their own Church space. An hour of the service was dedicated to conversation and reports about that, I'm told. The service was fully in Amharic. Nebyat seemed engaged and seemed to like it. She did go and look through the door to where the children were several times, but never mustered up the courage to stay too long. At the end of the service, there was more music and some of the kids ran up front to sing/perform along with the adults. With encouragement, Nebyat joined them. After the service, we were invited to the other room where they "broke bread", literally. People congregated, socialized and ate tasty bread while getting ready to head back out into the weather. We were warmly treated while there and hope to develop some closer ties to our local Ethiopian community via the Church. Nebyat enjoyed herself; she's asked to go back; and there were about 80-100 (not counting all of the children) Ethiopian Americans right here in our neck of the woods. I think this will provide many opportunities to reconnect and focus on Ethiopian culture and we look forward to developing relationships with the people we've met so far. I'm attaching some videos below, the first two include Nebyat at the front "performing." The latter have just audio as I was trying to capture some of the music played.