January 31-- Always Up Early and Church Singing

January 31, 2010

Last night I had a hard time sleeping, and I got another random phone call phone at one in the morning. It was a wrong number. Then at 5:30 I just woke up and layed in bed until 6 until I got out of bed. I got my laundry done so that I got get a taxi to church and be on time. I left around 8:35 from the house, took a shared taxi to church for 40 pesewas. There, I was introduced to the congregation. This time at church, I wanted to be productive so I studied my scriptures about some things that were on my mind. Annika was talking with Elvis a few days ago about why he was okay to beat children. He said that is was in the Bible that it is okay to beat children. So I found the scripture he was probably referring too, and I started to scripture reference and find out more about the context and history of the scripture. It was Proverbs 23:13-14. Or just look in the Topic guide under beat.
For church, we did the usual like you would anywhere, just that it was different atmosphere. I don’t understand most anything. I stayed in Sunday school again and just read the lesson book they handed me. That will work great. Then Relief Society where I found out there was a funeral. Since it was the 5th Sunday, it was combined. For the class, the Bishop told the congregation how the church does funerals. He has to explain it because funerals here are so different, and the churches help in different ways. A friend was helping to translate and said that they have never had a member funeral yet. Then Sister Saunders informed me that she would be gone this weekend and asked if I could play the piano for the service and for Sunday. I said, “sure”. So I will be there at 8 this Saturday until 4 for the funeral and then on Sunday I will play also. I am glad that I will be able to contribute in some way here. They lent my there organ to practice on for the week. When the people sing, not just in church, but everywhere, what they do is someone elects themselves to sing the first few bits of the song and then stops and either them or the leader will say” go” then everyone joins in. So that is real fun. And when they sing here, they just belt it out. I like it, although I can’t sing harmony because the whole group changes pitch, and it is just weird. Sometimes the melody is way off from the hymns as well. Like singing hymn 100, I forgot the title, but it just doesn’t even sound the same. So that is fun.
Walking home from church, I got a lot of “Obroni! Obroni! Give me money!” Sometimes I get frustrated about it, but I just need to learn to ignore my irritation and just give mechanical, friendly answers. Also, two girls grabbed my hands and walked me home. There, an Elderly man started to talk with me. The young girls I just met translated. He first said, “I love you. I will come to your house later.” And then the girls said that I was just having fun. Of course I knew he was kidding it is just so cute coming from an elderly guy like him around 80 years.
For the rest of the day, I relaxed and thought a lot. I hope I can make it through this week. I am already so tired. My body aches from hiking yesterday and the sun burn and also from sleeping wrong but I think it will be a great week.