We have finally found a church I love attending. Both the pastor and his wife speak wonderful English and don't mind translating for us. The only problem is that they are leaving for Canada in ten or so days. Needless to say we joined them for their Christmas Eve service which was held on the 23rd. They told us the service will start at seven and go till middle night that did not quite happen. After a full day of shopping in Hualien city, Ben, Jon-e and I got back just before six in the evening, Christina and Bethany went to Christmas parties at their schools and so got home just a little earlier than us, and Jocelyn stayed behind and cooked and shopped for me.
We were running a little short for time, but managed to arrive at church right at seven. Only when we got there did they tell us we did not need to rush as everyone comes late so they will start late. They were right we started sometime after seven-thirty and the service in church went till nine-thirty. We had everything to normal dances, to some what native dances. We had an informal choir to a very formal choir which sounded just wonderful even thought I could not understand them. We even had simple questions ask such as "Where was Jesus born?" to the English Teachers (us) singing and Ben telling a story. They passed oranges and gifts out to everyone and the pastor shared a little bit of his testimony.
After all that was said and done, we rushed home dropped some of our stuff off and then went back to church to go caroling with them. We left around ten and went to...wait I will tell you later. The goal that night was for the group to visit every member of the church. When we get to someone’s house we will all stand outside of the dark house and sing a Christmas song, then we will start to sing the second song and then and only then are the people of the house to open the door and turn on the lights. Someone will then get our attention and we will shout Merry Christmas all of which is in Chinese, except for the one time when they asked us to do it in English. We are then invited in if the church member knew that we were coming and given food and because we were the special foreigners we could not get away without taking something they would notice.
After visiting so many houses I can not remember how many, four of us tapped out and decide to go to house at one in the morning. Jon-e and Christina decided they could still stay up. Thankfully, I fell asleep soon because I was tired, only to wake up to the horrible noise of my phone ringing. I tried answering it without sounding like I was drunk( I can't make my vocal cords or anything like that work right after I have been shocked away) and without making much noise while getting out of my room. It did not work. It was Jon-e he was calling to tell me they were coming to our house to sing to us. I was too tired to come downstairs and be nice so I told him to service the cookies that where in the kitchen and well I can't remember what else I said. After saying good-bye I looked at my clock and it was 3:18 a.m. I heard them arrive sing to us, chat and leave, and that is when Christina and Jon-e left the party, I have no clue how much longer they went on before they all turned in for what we would now call the morning. I often wonder how the Taiwanese manage to stay up so late.
So that was our Christmas Eve Service in a small town in Taiwan.
Merry Christmas to all of you!
Josephine
