I’m a believer! Pretty amazing Grace!

If you haven’t figured out the link for the Blog post titles by now then you never will, because they are all song titles or corruptions thereof.
Today being Sunday the island is closed and everyone goes to church. Not difficult as there must be at least one church per 500 inhabitants. Up to approx 10 years ago the only CITC churches were set up by LMS (London Missionary Society), but since then there has been movement for the churches to be peoples churches with services in Cook Islands Maori language. We were able to sing the Introit as we recognised the hymn as Holy, Holy, Holy and the language is almost phonetic in pronunciation and with the words on two screens we could cope. Most of the service was in the local language but the screen was used to indicate what was happening. The pastor made a real effort to put prayers , notices and sermon in English as well.
The a cappella singing in up to 8 parts with men singing cantor as well was an amazing sound. There were some guttural shouts reminiscent of the hakka which worked almost like a living percussion.
We all sang the Benediction, He is Lord, He is lord but rather slower we are used to which helped as we were singing in CIM.
We remade contact with Geoff and Catherine after the service, who we learnt have an elder son Joel who lives in London and is a percussionist with Tim Hughes at Holy Trinity, Brompton and is very into Soul Survivor as a result. Small world or what?
Everyone was dressed in their Sunday best and we all had “morning tea” after the service, which was an agape buffet lunch of enormous proportions. This is a normal island Sunday tradition.
The PA speakers in the church were delicately covered with handmade lace and were definitely there to be heard and not seen. The flowers on the other hand turned the whole church into a tropical paradise. What a place and statement to the worship in this place.
We didn’t take any photographs as you really need to experience the whole thing, as we’re sure you will appreciate.
So, as we sit in 28⁰C by the beach under a palm frond sunshade we must say farewell to Rarotonga shortly as we prepare to fly to Auckland NZ. The excitement is building as Ron has only waited 50 years to get to NZ!