Sunday morning I met Marques and Julya at church. It was a great service, and good to have Julya experience Peace Chapel. She was ecstatic to find that true worship does exist in Samoa and felt the Spirit moving in that church. Her and I hung out for the remainder of the day. I had no food, so we had a flashback to the village and made spaghetti sandwiches. We then walked over to Candice’s house so that I could deliver a message to her. She doesn’t have a phone, so if I need to tell her something I have to go to her house. We came back, I got ready for the evening church service and Julya took a taxi back to Holly’s. During worship at church it was pouring rain and God gave me a vision that He was pouring His grace and mercy down on that church. It was beautiful. Pastor Samoa said that he was going to keep preaching until the rain stopped, but after two hours the rain was still coming down – hard. I waited for a bit and realized that it was not going to let up at all. I jumped into the pastor’s van to catch a ride home, along with all his kids and some extended family visiting from Australia and New Zealand. We drove around for a while and it was literally flooding everywhere. We saw one guy standing out in the rain and it was up to his knees! I wanted to take pictures, but I didn’t want my camera to get wet, but just imagine how fast and high the rain built up!
On Monday and Tuesday I helped with painting the church school. We are working on getting rid of all the paint on the rails before we can repaint them. It was funny, as six of us were scraping the rails with knives and the tops of the paint cans, feeling like it was a job that would never end. Pastor Samoa told me to take the day off on Wednesday and come to the church for a funeral of one of the members that died last week.
Today I went to the church at 10 AM for the funeral. I wanted to experience a Samoan funeral, and wanted to give my support as a fellow member of the congregation. I was the only palagi there and the entire service was in Samoan, so I didn’t really understand what was being said. The service lasted for three hours and included songs from the worship team, songs from the family, speeches from various people, prayers from a couple pastors and offerings of fine mats.
After the ceremony I headed to the Peace Corps office to check my mail. I got a Christmas card from Craig (the leader of my mission trip to Tunisia) and a package from my mom. The package was awesome! It had clear playing cards, tea, clothes, flip flops, towels, cookies, nuts, baggies and some bathroom stuff. Thanks mom!!!
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