Our Church in Dangriga

Ok, even those of you that don't belong to our church should get a kick out of our first Sunday in the Dangriga branch of The Church of Latter-day Saints. We arrived on time and assembled in a room that measures about 12 ft sq. We all (all 19 of us including 5 visitors, two missionaries and our family) sit in chairs facing the white board. We begin with song and prayer and then Alfred teaches the relief society/priesthood lesson to everyone (children and youth included). After that meeting concludes we all stand up and visit for a few minutes and then sit back down for sunday school. After sunday school we all stand up and turn our chairs 90 degrees so that we are now facing the pulpit. At this point the branch president pulls out a microphone. There are three rows of people and we have just had two meetings without a mike in the same room but, apparently, you can't have sacrament meeting without one. We also now have music to sing our hymns to. True it's a CD but music none the less. The hymns were another interesting point of the morning. Each person came in and grabbed a hymn book, either spanish or english, and that was the language you sang in. Luckily I grabbed an english one by total fluke or life really would have been fun! Everyone sings out very nicely but a full half of the people are singing in Spanish while the other half are singing in English. Talk about confusing! If you lose your place you can't just rely on the person next to you. It was fun and the people are so nice! Everyone laughed together and worshipped together and it was a truely uplifting experience. We are now going to the church on Tuesday nights to take spanish lessons from the missionaries and improve communication withing the branch. Maybe we'll find out those spanish members weren't really laughing WITH us! Till next time ... Keep smilin'