My sister just sent me an email saying that it is time for a new blog and she is right. My excuse was that it is too hot to be entertaining, so you can be the judge of that. The good news is that we are on the tail end of our experiences of Fiji hot seasons. It should start cooling off any week now and by the time that we leave in July, it should be that weather that you pay a lot of money to travel to. Right now, it is that kind of weather that people travel to because the flights are cheaper.
Tonight was a rare treat in the village; an honest to goodness big tent revival, Fiji-style. The CMF church which has all of about 8 members in the village invited some group, which may have been called The Eagle Force, to come and entertain/convert us to the CMF brand of Christianity. I am not exactly sure what that entails, but I know that they play a lot of guitar and I would guess that there is a fair amount of the hand waving and tongue-speaking. Anyway, back to the show/revival, it cost F$3 (US$free) to get in and they had a gate, tickets, a stamp, everything. Impressive. There was a lot of music, which was pretty good all things considered, a bit of joke telling, a couple of instances of preachers yelling at the crowd, a whole lot of praying, and of course, the action choruses.
Action choruses may be a new thing to you, dear reader, as they were new to me ere my arrival in Fiji. Here is what it is. Some music plays, preferably aged English Christian pop songs, and a group of 5-10 people do a choreographed interpretive dance. It is truly amazing. Sally has used other adjectives to describe them and I haven’t heard her mention amazing just yet.
Sally and I paid our $3 because you have to support any sort of money-making venture in this country in my opinion; they just never happen and if someone is pitching a product, any product, with the intent of making money to better himself/herself/the church I am buying. Usually the standard mode of getting money is to have a fundraiser called a soli. Basically you pay to drink kava, the same thing that you do every night only tonight you pay for it because we are raising money for something. I’ll take the action chorus, thank you.
Today is April 1st in Fiji, which is both Sally and my favorite day of the year. Sally because she loves April Fool’s Day, and me because it is Opening Day for baseball (and often coincides with the NCAA Final Four. GO VCU!!!). Wish me luck as I wade through my wife’s pranks to try to listen to the Giants play. If she really wanted to get me, she would hide the internet thingy so I couldn’t listen to the game. Please don’t tell her.
