Travel Diary - Day Forty Three

Day Forty Three – In the Zone
Sunday 11 Oct 09

Finally, a day that I don’t need to start at 6am to get ready for church! The service starts at 9:30am, positively civilised! I turned down the offer to walk and was most pleased at that decision. I have finally begun to understand the meaning of the term, ‘country mile.’ It doesn’t matter who you ask about where you are going, their estimate of how far will always be on the short side, and usually by quite some. We were told that the church we would be attending was just a short way up the main road. By the time we had got there on the bus we had travelled several kilometres. That was exacerbated by the heat and the fact that it began to rain heavily. The humidity was insane inside the church!

This was the largest congregation I have experienced while in Guyana. I didn’t count, but I would estimate there were easily 250 people including children. The music was provided by a keyboard, drums and 6 singers and it was pretty good. I knew some of the choruses and some of them were unfamiliar, but all well led so it was easy to keep up. Just two hymns. Hallelujah!! Kelly provided the preaching and did a great job. The notices only lasted about 5 minutes. Amazing! We all had to stand up and introduce ourselves and get applauded in turn. The service lasted for about 90 minutes and was actually the most bearable service I have attended while I have been here. Plenty of young people and lots of children. Fantastic. Heaps of people hanging around to shake our hands after the service – kind of funny really, we don’t really have anything to do with any of them but somehow shaking our hands means something.

We all got soaked on the 5m run to the bus but in these temperatures that doesn’t matter. We got back to Sapodilla with a bit of time to spare before lunch and I decided I would make a start on my reflection. I had already done some of it but had plenty to get on with. Once I got into it I found that there was a huge amount that I wanted to say. In fact every time I had to stop for one reason or another I found myself itching to get back to it – definitely on a roll.

My title is, ‘The Sexy Church in Guyana: A Fashion Guide for the Discerning.’ In short I suggest that Scripture points toward the church being able to learn from, even emulate the sexuality between the Bride and Groom that is part of a marriage ceremony. If you want the extended version I will post it on my blog, but be warned, it is just over 7000 words long and not for the faint hearted.

Actually my essay writing had me fixated for most of the rest of the day. There was just something compelling about it that kept on drawing me back to it. And some of the lines I wrote just worked in a way that still has me wondering where they came from.

A pretty good day all up.