Church Dedication - Another Cultural Experience

My day started off at the Peace Corps office for some refresher language training. All the language trainers had been off since we moved into our places, and I had been practicing my Samoan and had some questions. It was fun to feel like I was in training for a brief hour.

I rode my bike by the church to see if the YWAM kids were painting at the church and to see if they needed my help. The pastor looked at his watch and told me I was late (kidding) and told me to go help them. I painted with the pastor’s son and we had a lot of fun chatting. It made the time go by super fast. I went home and grabbed my laptop and speakers so we would have music to listen to.

I was getting ready to go home and the pastor told me that his daughter was going to be dancing tonight at a church dedication and that it would be a fun cultural experience for me.

Dave and Torrey picked me up and we drove over to the new church. There were hundreds of people watching as many people would get up to dance. Families would ask to dance to the next song and then people that came up to dance would drop money off into boxes for donations to the church. After each dance they would tally the money up and empty the boxes for the next dance. After about 5 dances they would read off how much each dance raised in donations. It was a riot. Pastor Samoa’s daughter led one of the last dances, so we all got up and danced during that song. We left shortly after, as we had been sitting there for a couple of hours.