I went to church in guatemala today and noticed a few differences between there and church in say pleasant grove, utah.
Some few differences
- much more razor wire
- a gated wall
- nice tile, but no carpet inside that I could see
- the benches in the chapel could move, like they weren’t bolted down
- a ramp going up to the stand
- no organ
- hymnals were pretty scarce
- the sacrament on the sacrament table was left / right, not front / back. like the bread was on the left, the water on the right or vice versa
- much more spanish spoken
- only one ward uses the pretty good sized chapel
- lots of handshaking, like I might have shaken hands with thirty people? and I don’t think it was just because we were visiting. folks were very friendly to us and I think generally
- I think there was a brown out or something, so the lights and microphone weren’t working when church started
- started a bit late, maybe ten minutes? at nine the place was pretty empty. folks were setting up chairs and someone in our group mentioned they thought that was faith. part way through sacrament the chairs were pretty well full. I should point out that a ward at byu was pretty well empty when the meetings would start (like four people or something crazy like that) and my current ward is sometimes a little sparse at 9
- breast feeding without the good old apron (just one lady)
- had basketball courts both inside and out
- part of the parking lot was a basketball court
- part of the basketball court was a couple soccer goals
- there was grass in the parking spaces
- a woman who was baptized yesterday got confirmed during sacrament meeting. seems like that’s how it used to go, but now it happens at the baptism (at least the last several I have attended)?
- recent converts went to the first week of a two week family history class where hopefully next week they’d have enough info to take a name to the temple. sounds pretty inspired actually
Some few similarities
- started and ended with prayer
- had songs
- as has been wont to happen in the past, I played the piano. kind of fun to play something where you don’t know what you’re about to play. nothing like trusting the rhythms for a bit 🙂 used to happen when I would sightread new song in primary
- folks nicely dressed. pretty well white shirts and ties for the men and dresses for the ladies
- folks gave good talks (a guy in our group translated for another gringo and me)
- folks made jokes about hoping there wasn’t enough time to speak
- folks bore their testimonies
- teacher had insights and we had a good lesson as mentioned above
- felt the spirit
For the record, I manage a couple teams of programmers that write software to help record custodians capture, publish, etc. their records. We work with records custodians that have genealogically significant records involving births, marriages, deaths, etc. A group of four of us came down to see how things were going, sense needs and help with some relationships.
Enjoy!
Earl