Day 30 (sunday)

Woke up at the usual, Maureen insisted on doing some laundry before church, which I thought was a bit much considering that church was supposed to start at 8 and it was already quarter of. We were running late but it didn't seem to bother her at all and so we departed and began the journey to the church. When we got there and there it was very loud and everyone was singing and jumping around, screaming, and shouting all sorts of hallelujah's...we were ushered to our seats and stood for quite some time (singing for what seemed like an hour), mommy and daddy hadn't shown up so I thought they may not be coming (they eventually showed up). Then there was more singing, more standing and sitting (I was exhausted and the service wasn't even half over yet...I've been to plenty of churches so I was aware of the processes). The message was nice and it makes me realize how important church and religion are to the people here (for some, it's all they have). Today's service was a combined one, thus taking longer, because on the first sunday of the month they do communion. The lights went out at one point which added to an already surreal atmosphere but the pastor was still able to carry his voice pretty well. Then the power came back on and it got crazy loud again and people were screaming in response to him. Then my least favorite but still entertaining part was when the pastor called people up to the stage if they wanted to have him pray for them and began doing so (touching their heads and and screaming and some were falling to the ground and crying [I swear he touched the same girl that kept falling maybe 3 or 4 times]...needless to say it was very intense), it was quite the show. Afterwards the pastor asked who was new to the church and (I was one of maybe a half dozen visiting for the first time) then asked them to fill out their form so they would have a better understanding of who was visiting their congregation (I obliged and filled one out but couldn't ever find out who to return the forms to) then the pastor invited me into his office and was very humbled and glad to reach out his hand to personally welcome me and pray for me, it was a very nice gesture...you can imagine how much I stood out when I wasn't dancing and jumping and singing at the top of my lungs (all that aside from the obvious), needless to say it was very exhausting and when we got home I quickly made some pb & j's and then laid down to rest.