Sunday Church

Church for us here takes place in a simple leaf house. There are no walls. I'm glad there are no walls - the wind blows through and cools things down. The base is concrete and there are hard wooden planks that rest on two concrete blocks stacked under each end of the plank. There is no back rest. I always try to get there early (well, on time, actually - 10am, when it starts) and then i might get a seat (there are four) with a pillar behind me to rest my back. But alas, I'm usually too late and some elderly person has bet me to it. It's probably better that way. I'm young, though I'm not particularly tough and sitting on a plank is hard yakka.

We always arrive a sweaty mess from the 15 minute walk. But Sunday was worse. Last week we followed the road the whole way, but then Laki, who always follows us to church, fought with every single dog along the way! Ok, avoid the road.

This week we took the short cut... which is technically shorter, and when we first started going to this church was shorter and more pleasant. Now it is rather overgrown. By over grown, I mean the grass was 30cm taller than Jair in some places. Honestly we need to bring a machete with us, but we didn't so Jair had to use the umbrella instead. You could see that maybe some time in the past someone had walked the track. Some places however, showed no evidence of civilisation.

So we arrived not only sweaty, but scratched, and our clothes were drenched from wading through wet grass. But that's ok. Anything goes, here.

We arrived after 10am, which is when church starts, and as usual, church hadn't started yet. But that's ok, it was raining and when it rains everything takes longer, I mean, even longer than usual island time.

Eventually church started. I'm not sure when. It doesn't really matter. Church started when everyone arrived.

As I said, Laki follows us to church. It doesn't often rain, so he's happy to sit underneath one of the two cars that comes to church. But under the car was rather wet - in fact, it started flooding up with water - it became a lake. At first Laki was happy to wonder around, fight with the dog who lives nearby (Laki won) etc etc. But ten minutes into the sermon I noticed Laki sitting inside next to the visiting Pastor's wife! I was mortified and motioned to Jair to expel the dog!

Jair tried, and then Laki decided scamper behind the pastor at the stage area. Imagine our horror for a few moments, would you. Not only us, but a few other people, much to my chagrin, are trying to hiss Laki away. Then the visiting pastor stops in his tracks and says, "don't worry about the dog. The dog is ok there. Dogs were with us on the ark. He's ok."

The heat in the Solomons already makes me look red and blushed - this made me even more so! Thankfully Laki then decided to lay quietly underneath a bush behind the stage - technically outside of the building, but then with no walls, the boundaries are a bit sketchy. He stayed there for most of the rest of the service.

Then after church finished - around 1:20pm (it started some time after 10, you remember), we had our light refreshments. The previous week it was announced that we would have light refreshments. The guy said, "Let me just explain what we mean by light refreshments..." I'm eagerly listening to his definition. "It just means bring whatever you want. If you want to cook rice and bring it, then that's ok. If you want to motu cassava pudding, that's fine. If you want to bring some juice. Anything. Whatever you want to make, you bring for our light refreshments." HA!

So, light refreshments was a rather heavy meal. I brought cake - to me, that is a light refreshment. Not so in this culture, but they all loved the cake. It's not something Solomon Islanders often eat.

Someone was explaining, while we waited 1/2 an hour for the light refreshments to be prepared and brought to the table, that if they said, "we're going to have a big lunch!" and in the end all that people brought were a few loaves of bread, then they would feel a lot of shame (much the same way I felt about Laki's presence in church...) but if they said, "we're just have a little bit of food, nothing much", and a feast is laid before us, then we'll be happy and content and the shared hospitality will be a good thing.

After our "light refreshments" (it was now after 2pm), we walked home, taking the road this time. Laki got distracted as soon as we got out of the drive way but eventually he found his way back because he was home for dinner.

Anyway, I thought the whole experience of going to church was amusing - I mean, coming from our orderly, tidy and perfect oriented culture, it was a crazy service! But, we met with God's people and we worshipped God and were fed from His word. And what a joyous thing to be surrounded by people who love God just like you do.