So, last night was the actual Divali. My friend who invited me to the Divali celebration last weekend invited me last night to her house again. Yesterday was also her birthday. Daddy wasn't able to go because he wasn't feeling very well. We weren't sure what we should wear to it, but Roxy and I just wore pretty casual clothes. Then, when we got there, my friend went upstairs to change into something called a sari. It is a type of traditional Indian clothing that is very pretty and some Indian people here wear for special occasions. Her brothers were lighting little candle type things that they put all over their yard, called deyas. They let me and Roxy and Mommy light some, too. Then, my friend's mom came over and showed us where the food was and told us to eat supper. We ate supper with my friend's dad. Not many other guests had showed up yet. After a while, some people did start to show up. One of them was their neighbor who is in Roxy's class at school, and a friend of Roxy's. She also had on a sari. Then my friend and Roxy's friend decided they wanted us to wear saris too. So, they took us up to my friend's room where she had and extra sari, and something that is somewhat similar, but is called a salwar, I think, but that could be wrong. Anyways, that was really fun to dress up in those! I had a pink sari, and Roxy got the blue salwar. Then we went for a walk, which I will let Roxy write about.
~Olivia


Both of our friends from school who Olivia mentioned (My friend Stephanie in the red sari and Olivia's friend Dipika in the orange sari) live in a village called Bamboo 3. (Bamboo 1, Bamboo 2, and Bamboo 3 are all separate little villages.) The large majority of Bamboo 3 is Hindu, so there were a lot of deyas at almost every house we went by. They had a lot of packages of what we call sparklers but they call starlights, so we just lit them in the deyas by the side of the road. There were firecrackers being set off all over the road so we had to be careful not to step on them. (I don't think there are such thing as sidewalks in Trinidad...) On our walk, we also got to visit Stephanie's house and meet her family. It was nice to get to see a little of their village and their families.
~Roxy

There were many nice things about our experience last night. For one thing, the whole school system is very different here. We drive a long way to take our children to school as do others. They go to school with kids from a large area of the island. Therefore, we had not really gotten to meet any of the other children or their families. I feel like we are beginning to know Olivia's friend's family and had a chance to at least meet a family of one of Roxy's friends.
When we sat down to eat, the father of the hosting family came to sit and eat with us. As he began to explain to us the reasons for this Hindu celebration, we learned that he is a Hindu priest. So not only were we invited to a Hindu home, we were at the home of the priest of the village. I told him that I was a pastor. He was all about talking religion. He wanted to talk and talk. It's not every day that I get to share a meal with a Hindu priest and have a lively but friendly discussion of comparative religion.
The daughter came to me to get my permission for Olivia and Roxy to dress in the Indian garb. I gave it and she invited me up to help them change. She seemed to think that I, being a mom, would know how to tie Olivia's sari. I had no idea. She had only a vague idea even though she was wearing one. Apparently that is the job of the mother. She had to go get hers to show us all how. No, I still do not understand it. But I found a role as photographer.
Today Richard preached at the Mennonite Church in Chaguanas. After being with some of that group for a women's meeting on Sat and a cell group on Tues last week, we are starting to feel like we are getting to know some of the folks pretty well. All in all it was a good weekend of building relationships and discussing faith.
~Barb

One of the things that has impressed us in Trinidad is the encouragement for each of the various religious groups to take part in one another's celebrations. We were initially surprised when we arrived at how open Christians were to sending their children to either Muslim or Hindu schools, and vice-versa. When we met our Hindu neighbor Kishore, he made the comment to us, “with all the crime in the country these days, Trinidad needs people like you more than ever.” We understood this to mean that he was not only tolerant but also appreciative of the work of the churches here.
In our time here, we have witnessed the Muslim celebration of Eid al-Fitr and now the Hindu festival of Divali. Because it happened to fall on the same day that we visited the church in Sangre Grande, we were not home on the day of the Eid. We learned later, however, that one of our Muslim neighbors had stopped by to invite us to join in their celebration. We also received a Divali invitation from Kishore, but had already accepted the invitation to Bamboo that the girls already wrote about. These have been important opportunities for us to gain greater insight and understanding into the local culture.
We also participated in the 25^th anniversary thanksgiving service for our friends and neighbors, Ramesh and Babes. The thanksgiving was an explicitly Christian celebration, but also included a number of their Hindu and Muslim neighbors. We have been struck by the ways in which each of these groups is able to authentically observe their own traditions without worrying about offending others. Such openness provides both the opportunity to understand one another better and a greater possibility to share the message of the gospel to those of other faith traditions.
~Richard