Church & Holidays

Living above a church means that your life is intrinsically connected to the church. For instance, we are supposed to turn on the light for the cross on the outside of the building each night when it gets dark. The switch for it is in our living room. That also means that when I get up at night to use the bathroom, my way is lit by a huge cross nightlight that fills my living room.
Recently, we came home from our teaching responsibilities to find that the congregation was having a night of prayer. Since our bedroom overlooks the sanctuary and the sound from downstairs rises easily to our bedroom, we moved our mattress into the living room, where the cross kept things very light, but the enthusiastic prayers and songs were not so noticeable. Although we have preached a couple of times at this church, it is not the church to which we have been primarily assigned. So it is one of 6 congregations inviting us to its events. Last weekend they had revival meetings. Several of the Mennonite churches here have them in November. I think it has to do with preparing for Christmas. They had 3 speakers, one for each night. Friday, the first night, we were teaching. As we pulled in and went up our stairs, we could hear the evangelist preaching. The girls remarked that she reminded them of Martin Luther King in the way her voice rose and fell. On Saturday and Sunday evenings Richard and I joined the congregation. Roxy and Olivia spent both evenings at youth groups for 2 of the other churches. They did that again this weekend. Meanwhile Chaguanas Mennonite Church was having their revival meetings this weekend and asked our family to bring a song. So after the girls got home from one youth group last night we hurried to the savannah (park) there where we set up a keyboard and Olivia accompanied the other 3 of us as we sang Praise, I will praise you Lord.
~Barb

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. OK, not in the sense that one might expect back in Kansas where they've had their first snowfall of the year. With just over a month till Christmas, it's still 90 degrees Fahrenheit almost every day. But the continuous hot weather doesn't keep the Trinis from pulling out all the stops to celebrate the holiday. In fact, since there aren't particular markers to begin the Christmas season like changes in the weather or other holidays such as Thanksgiving and Halloween, people here are free to start celebrating whenever they want. We were in a mall four weeks ago that was already fully decorated for Christmas. It's not unusual to see houses blazing with Christmas lights, either. There are decorations along the highway near our apartment that have been there almost since we arrived, incorporating symbols for all the major religious holidays here: Eid (Muslim), Divali (Hindu) and Christmas (Christianity). And several radio stations are playing Christmas music all day long. One of them has been advertising their "100 Days of Christmas" for some time now. Since it never snows here, it's interesting to hear how the lyrics of some of the secular carols are sometimes adjusted. Christmas is also a time when the Spanish heritage of the island is more celebrated. Even though Spain claimed Trinidad for 300 years, and even though we are only seven miles from the coast of South America, there is usually very little Spanish influence evident in the culture. But Christmas celebrations include pastelles (a food similar to Latin American tomales) and parang (songs often sung in Spanish that exhibit a more Latin beat).
~Richard

School? We're not quite sure what this week is going to look like concerning school. There has been a 5-day strike going on which started last Friday. The idea is kind of vague, but it is sort of a general strike against the government, but maybe also about crime and the government's lack of response to that. On Friday and Saturday people were encouraged to wear red, today there was a big rally somewhere, and tomorrow and Tuesday people are encouraged to skip work. So there was some discussion and controversy both at school and youth group tonight about whether or not school was happening tomorrow. We decided that we would go tomorrow and if basically no one showed up we would not come Tuesday. We have, however, already decided to skip school on Thursday because of Thanksgiving. Some of our friends who are Hindu have already missed some school because of minor Hindu holidays that are not celebrated by the people as a whole, so we thought that this wouldn't be too big of a deal. Plus Thursday might be called as a national holiday later this week anyways because of the commonwealth meetings being held here. The meetings (including people such as Queen Elizabeth) will start on Friday, and the day that they arrive may be called a national holiday because one of the main roads may be shut down to everyone except the leaders of countries arriving! So we have been hoping that the day they shut everything down will be Thursday, and then we will be sure we don't miss anything! (But we probably wouldn't anyways...)
~Roxy

Roxy and I just got home from youth group. The youth groups have been practicing for their Christmas programs for a while now. At Hope Mennonite Church, where we were tonight, the Christmas play is written from the shepherd's point of view. It's more common here to not have any sort of script. One of the leaders just got the idea and he tells people what to do and if other people have ideas, they can contribute, so there's some improvisation involved. I'm playing one of the shepherds (the one who gets frightened easily). After we were done practicing for the play, we went out into the middle of the road and played some games. This is hazardous in many ways. For one thing, it was at least 6:00, maybe 6:30 by the time we went out there, so it was pretty dark already. Everyone was wearing flip-flops, so we just kicked them off in the grass and went barefoot. The road had lots of little rocks and bumps in it and wasn't the most comfortable surface to run on, but no one else seemed to notice that. There were a few injuries, however, including me tripping in a pothole and falling, but it was still mostly fun. Whenever a car came, we'd just stop our game, grab everything, run to the side, let the car pass and then continue the game as if nothing ever happened.
~Olivia