Category Archives: Announcements

Today at Chirst Church we celebrated father’s and loving communities.  The children chose presents for these father figures, a crown, a billy to go camping with, tools to fix things.  A bible to know our heavenly father more, and a hose water timer to keep the garden well watered and growing.  Very wise choices for our fathers and our community.

This morning Judy and I went for a walk and on the way back I saw a shed that seemed to be set up with pews as if it were a church.  I looked inside and I could see an Anglican Mother’s Union banner.  It is less than a block away and I walked for half an hour to get to the Presbyterian Church I went to on Sunday.  Yet I had asked the staff at our hotel about an Anglican Church and they hadn’t seemed to know.  And would they have directed me to this very humble Anglican Church if they had known it was there?  Or was this one considered unacceptable for a Western visitor?  I decided that as our church is open for visitors, I would assume this one was too.  It had no door to keep us out.  This was the very simplest of worship spaces; still looking magnificent with Bird of Paradise and Heliconia flowers in large vases inside and a vine with yellow flowers growing over the roof.  Purple cloth lined the walls.  The dirt  floor was covered in tiny white stones or coral.  We went in and sat for a while in silent prayer.  Children came over and sat with us, but after a little while an adult called them away.  I wish I was still here this Sunday, to worship there.

The Nagire Presbyterian Church in Port Vila, Vanuatu, sends good wishes to Christ Church Anglican Church Swan Hill; I worshipped there this morning.  It was a bit hard trying to track down church addresses and times. The Anglican service was at 7.30 in the morning and I couldn’t get an address.  Though this one that I attended was supposed to start at 10 am but we were singing choruses for half an hour before the actual service started at 10.30.  I took the photo soon after I arrived and the church filled up much more.  The band sits at the front and faces the altar. I think there were two or three guitarists. The women sit on the pews on the right side and the men on the left.  The service finished about 12.30 so 2 and a half hours on wooden pews without backs was quite a commitment.  The women all wore the beautiful colourful traditional dresses, and I wish I had bought one to wear. (I had looked at them but with such a range, it was too hard to decide which one to buy). None of the women wore slacks.  The men do usually wear trousers but there is a short sarong option called a sulu.

I felt very much welcomed although I was the only Westerner there.

The sermon was all about seeking first the Kingdom of God.  This was a Bislama language service, but the leaders seemed to move back and forward from Bislama to English and I found it easy enough to get the general idea, though I missed out on understanding the jokes.

I was particularly looking forward to the singing and I wasn’t dissapointed.  The pronunciation of Bislama follows mostly the same rules as Indonesian, so I was able to sing along.

Here is the Lord’s Prayer in Bislama:

Papa blong mifala, we yu stap long heven,
nem blong yu i tambu.
Mifala i wandem we olgeta man oli ona long yu,
mo we yu yu kam king blong olgeta man,
mo we olgeta man long wol oli mekem olsem we yu yu wandem,
olsem we olgeta long heven oli stap mekem.
Plis yu givim kakae long mifala, i naf blong tede.
Yu fogivim mifala from ol sin blong mifala,
olsem we mifala i stap fogivim ol man
we oli mekem i nogud long mifala.
Yu no letem ol samting oli kam traem mifala tumas,
yu blokem Setan i no kam spolem mifala.
From we yu nomo yu King,
yu nomo yu gat olgeta paoa,
mo ol gudgudfala samting oli blong yu nomo,
gogo i no save finis. Amen